


Crossed Out

by deansparkles



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Time Travel (kind of), fix-it (kind of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-06-06 23:33:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6774688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deansparkles/pseuds/deansparkles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Piers Nivans is ready to die. That doesn't mean the universe has to agree with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You want a better story. Who wouldn't?" — from _Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_

It’s not fair.

The thought creeps onto him like a faint whisper in the back of his head, growing stronger, louder with each breath he takes, no matter how hard he tries to ignore it.

Piers has accepted his fate, has accepted it long before he slammed that needle into arm. He’s always been prepared to have to do this somewhere along the way — dying.

He doesn’t regret his decision, of course he doesn’t. He did what was right, what was necessary to keep Chris safe. And, given the choice to do it over, he’d do it again, in a heartbeat, no hesitation. He’d do a lot of things differently, but not this one, never this one.

But still there is this tiny selfish part of him that can’t help but feel betrayed. Robbed. Of a future. Of doing more, being more. Of time — with the BSAA, with Chris. He’s spent six long months searching for his lost captain, and what did they get together? One day. It’s not fair.

No, acceptance does nothing to cancel out the overwhelming anger that’s trembling through his weakening body. But it’s not gonna be his body for much longer now, is it? He sees it for what it is — a cage. A prison of flesh and bones, with inescapable bars that have him ensnared, the tainted blood flowing through his veins destroying him from the inside. Gradually, steadily, inevitably, until there’s nothing left of _him_ anymore, leaving a monster beyond recognition and reason. 

Around him, the underwater facility continues falling apart. The alarm is ringing through the room, loud and shrill. The ceiling is collapsing, the debris hitting the ground with thundering crashes. If he tries to focus, Piers can only guess to decipher the tiny outline of Chris’s escape pod, floating in the water, faraway and _safe_. He’s not even able to make out Chris’s silhouette in the window anymore. 

This is it, Piers thinks. He’s gone. It’s over. They’re never gonna see each other again.

 _Goddammit_. Tears suddenly prick at it his eyes, and Piers instantly bites down on his bottom lip, twisting his face into a grimace. He’s kept his composure this entire time, and now he’s gonna cry? Minutes— _seconds_ before it’s over? 

It’s strange. During his time with the BSAA he’d often though about death. And after everyone they’ve lost along the way — how could he not? He just never imagined his last thoughts drifting towards things that seem so... insignificant. At least when you put them into the bigger picture. And isn’t the bigger picture all that matters? That the future is a safer place thanks to him and others fighting for their cause? That he’s never gonna feel sunshine on his skin ever again, that shouldn’t matter, right? Or that he’s never gonna see his mom again, never gonna eat her blueberry pie ever again, the one she always makes when Piers comes home, knowing that it’s his favorite.

God, when’s the last time he told her he loved her? He can’t remember, Piers realizes. It could have been months. Maybe a year. And just like that his eyes begin stinging once more. 

An image of Chris suddenly flares up in his mind, of the way his hair almost seems blond when the sun hits it just the right way. Piers thinks about that feeling he gets when they’ve put a BOW down, that moment they realize that the mission’s been a success, the relief and a bit of pride washing over him, and they share this one _look_ , every single time. He’s never gonna feel that again. Not with Chris, not with anyone. 

There’s no starting over, no second chances. 

His arm gives a violent twitch, and within seconds his knees give in, and he breaks down on the ground, still trying to keep in control, still fighting even when there’s nothing left to fight anymore. 

“ _Piers, you have to fight it, try to stay in control—”_

He closes his eyes, tries to concentrate on the rhythm of his shaky breaths, shuts out everything around him, the sounds, his arm, the wetness on his cheeks. 

“ _You did a real good thing.”_

“Argh,” Piers makes, opening his eyes again. He clenches his fist, regaining control over his own body, over the buzzing electricity that’s pulsating through his limb, trying to ignore that dreadful squishy sound it makes. He grits his teeth, determined, telling himself that it’s not gonna be much longer, that he just needs to hold on— when out of the corner of his vision he catches sight of movement in the water. Once he sees what it is, Piers’s heart drops. Haos. That goddamn BOW. Still alive, despite everything, making its way to Chris’s escape pod. Dammit—

“ _No, goddammit Piers, open the door!”_

Piers sets his jaw, planting his feet firmly on the ground. This is not gonna be all for nothing. He’s gonna see to that, if it’s the last thing he does. It probably is.

“ _I know it’s never been easy being my partner—”_

_“—there’s still time!”_

He raises his mutated arm, aiming towards the BOW, and, with all that’s left of his energy, he blasts every last bit of electricity he has towards Haos’s moving shape in the water.

“ _—once we get out of here, that’s all gonna change.”_

It’s too much. 

_“Piers, come on, just stay with me.”_

_“You’re gonna be okay!”_

Piers stumbles backwards and then doubles over, squirming in pain, and the voices in his head get louder and louder, repeating themselves like a broken record, echoing over and over again, while gradually everything turns darker, and the strength to keep his eyes open subsides. He puts his healthy hand over his ears, can feel the ooze and the blood clinging to his fingers, making everything slippery and wet. He rocks back and forth, grunting first, and then screaming, no longer able to hold it in, digging his own fingers into his skull, clawing at the skin, gripping his hair and pulling it, _feeling_ his mutated arm throbbing at his side, his heartbeat practically racing now, hammering against his ribcage, and God, it’s too much, he just wants it to be over, let the explosion blast him into pieces, him and that _thing_ inside of him, he doesn’t care anymore, just _please let it be over—_

_“Just stay with me—”_

_“Piers, just—”_

_“Come on—”_

_“—be okay!”_

_“Stay with me—”_

_“—Piers—”_

Then, suddenly, there’s only darkness. It all just stops.

There’s no alarm, no falling debris, no sound of rushing water.

Only Chris’s voice.

“Piers? You with me? It’s gonna be okay, all right? Claire! Hey, Claire! I think he’s waking up.”

“Thank God. I told you you should have brought him to a hospital.”

“But you are—”

“A med student, Chris, not a doctor yet.”

“...Chris?” Piers mumbles. The voices around him are muffled and distant, as if he’s being held underwater. And the words he is able to catch aren’t making any sense. He tries opening his eyes, but no matter how often he blinks, his vision remains blurry. He thinks he sees a flash of blue, but everything else stays unclear and smudgy. His head is spinning, and he’s just vaguely realizing that he’s lying on something soft. 

“Did you ever tell him about me?”

“Maybe. I don't know. Why?”

“I think he just said my name.”

“Probably just repeated it.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

Piers attempts to sit up, winces at the sharpness of the pain that shoots through his skull. Instinctively, his right hand darts up to the back of his head. There’s a wound there, mostly dried up, but when he draws his hand back again he can feel some remnants of blood sticking to his finger tips. 

“Easy there,” Chris’s voice says gently. “You took a bad blow to the head. Better take it slow, okay?”

Piers turns his head to the side, blinks again, and gradually the world around him regains shape. He tries to concentrate and decipher his surroundings in an attempt to determine the situation he’s found himself in. Even through his foggy thoughts his instinct tells him that it’s the vital thing to do.

Quickly letting his eyes roam over the room, Piers first catches sight of a coffee table at his side, right next to his head. He sees several empty beer bottles, all of them standing on coasters. A gaming controller — Playstation, Piers thinks. He’s not sure, it’s been a while since he’s last had the time to play. Behind the table, posters of various rock bands adorn the red-painted wall. Thrown over the backrest of a chair is a leather jacket with the words ‘Made In Heaven’ printed on it. The phrase seems familiar, but Piers can’t figure where he’s possibly seen it before. He knows it’s a Queen record, but the combination of the album title with a leather jacket makes something stir in the back of his mind. 

Pushing that puzzle aside for later, Piers looks behind the table, seeing a desk pushed against the wall with a large window. There’s a laptop on the desk — on the screen flickers some sort of text program — and beside it a frame with a family photo in it. It pictures a man, a woman and what Piers concludes to be their son, a redhead. It’s old and faded, and with a wrinkle in the middle. It must have been folded a lot before it ended up in the frame. He doesn’t recognize anyone on the photo.

His eyes flicker back to the empty beer bottles on the table next to him. He keeps his gaze fixed on them, knowing that if push comes to shove he’ll be able to use them as a weapon. Better be safe than sorry.

“Where the hell am I?” Piers croaks out.

“I’m gonna get some water,” a woman announces, and Jesus Christ, she sounds exactly like Claire. 

“Piers? Your name is Piers, right?” 

Piers nods slowly, turning his fixed gaze away from the beer bottles for a second to look back at the guy sitting on the armchair in front of him. 

_What the hell?_

Piers’s eyes widen, and if possible, his throat goes even drier than before. He immediately shuffles backwards, trying to put more space between them. 

“I’m Chris Redfield. You’re at my sister Claire’s apartment — but you already know Claire, right?”

“Of course I know Claire,” Piers snaps, opting to rather reveal his anger than the utter confusion he feels right now. Because fuck, this can’t be real. It’s Chris sitting before him, but it _can’t_ be. Not looking like this. 

“Look, I understand that you’re angry. That’s only fair. I’d be pretty pissed off too, if some stranger just ran me over with their bike.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” Chris says, “It was an accident. I just— I didn’t see you. It’s like you came out of nowhere.”

Piers doesn’t even listen to the words that are coming out of the stranger’s — _Chris’s_ mouth, not really. He just stares at the other man’s lips, dumbfounded, sees them forming words that aren’t making any sense. 

His eyes wander up, to Chris’s eyes, and Piers draws his eyebrows together as he sees that they’re _blue_. Clear, bright blue. Not brown, like he knows them to be. He doesn’t know why this little wrong detail bothers him so much, but it does. 

And Chris is _young_. 25 or 26, maybe 27. The fact that he’s clean-shaven and without the usual stubble makes his age even more prominent. And that he’s thin, and not hard-muscled at all. Scrawny, almost. Piers doubts this Chris has ever hit the gym before in his life.

The man sitting before him bears little resemblance to the SOU’s captain. But he knows it’s the same man, because Piers has seen Chris looking similar to this before, on pictures that Claire sent to him months ago. 

What the hell is going on here? 

Panic spreads through Piers’s chest, and he scans his mind for any leads at all about how he ended up here, why none of this is making sense, and then he remembers, the memories coming back with a jolt. Haos, the C-Virus, injecting himself with the enhanced strain, shoving Chris into the escape pod, waiting for his own death, shooting that last blast of electricity at the BOW with his mutated arm. _His arm_. 

Piers looks down, and it’s still _there_. There’s no harm to it, unblemished apart from a few scratches and a bit of dirt. It’s not torn apart, it’s not mutated. It’s just a normal, healthy arm. _What the fuck, what the fuck, what the—_

“Piers?” Lines of worry appear on Chris’s brow. 

_He doesn’t even know me._

Piers feels his heart speeding up, feels it thumping against his chest almost painfully. A sudden rush of nausea overcomes him, and he quickly puts a hand over his mouth, afraid of throwing up. It’s continually getting harder to breathe, and Piers curls his fist around the fabric of a cushion, trying not to hyperventilate. In a desperate attempt to distract himself, he bites down on the inside of his cheek, hard, and that disgusting taste of copper fills his mouth while the edges of his vision start to darken.

He’s seen panic attacks before, but he’s never had one himself. Fuck, it feels like dying. Talk about irony. 

A hand drops down on his shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly. “Talk to me, Piers. What’s wrong?”

 _Everything_ , Piers wants to say. _Everything is wrong._

In that moment Claire comes back into room, holding a glass of water with one hand. She takes one look at him, and then presses her lips into a determined line, slowly making her way over to him. She puts the glass on the table, close enough that it’s within Piers’s reach, and, gently, but firmly pushes Chris away from them to give Piers some much needed space. 

“Have you ever had a panic attack before?”

Piers shakes his head at her and reaches for the glass of water, gulping down a few mouthfuls. He begins coughing, and Claire takes the cup away from him again. 

“You need to regulate your breathing, okay? Take a deep breath and try to hold it for about five seconds.” Piers does as he’s told, while Claire counts the seconds for him. “All right, and now exhale through your mouth. Slowly. Good, just like that. And now again.”

He doesn’t look at Chris, at this _other_ Chris, not wanting to risk hyperventilating all over again. Instead, he focuses on Claire. She doesn’t look that differently. Yes, she’s certainly younger, no older than 20, and her hair is much longer and put up into a high ponytail, and she’s wearing cowboy boots and a pink leather jacket, but other than that she still looks like herself. The kind blue eyes are the same, as is the flaming red color of her hair. She’s still Claire. 

Feeling calmer, Piers pushes himself into a sitting position and tries to look at the situation rationally. It’s not gonna be much use if these people think he’s batshit. Or worse, that he’s got some kind of amnesia and decide to send him to a hospital. What if the C-Virus is still in his blood? Nah, not taking any chances with that. He’s not gonna be a lab rat, locked up behind closed doors, surrounded by lab coats and needles, being experimented on like Sherry Birkin or Jill. 

“Maybe we should take him to a hospital after all,” Chris suggests as if he’s read Piers’s mind. 

“No,” Piers says firmly, still a little out of breath. He holds out his hand, shaking his head. “No hospital. I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?” Claire asks, her voice laced with that ever present worry of hers.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I feel fine,” he assures her, and he _does_ feel fine, physically. And that’s exactly what’s worrying him. “Just a bit dizzy, that’s all.”

“Well, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like,” Claire offers. “And if you change your mind, I’ll take you to a doctor.”

“I just want to go home, if that’s all right?” Wherever that _is_. Hopefully Claire knows.

“Yes, sure, just tell me where and I’ll drive you.”

 _Dammit_. “Thanks.”

Piers stands up, hiding his trembling legs as best as he can, and looks down, only now seeing the stains of blood and dirt on his white shirt. There are some green patches of grass on there, too. God, he must look like he’s walked straight out of a horror movie. Well, where’s the lie? 

“Do you maybe have a shirt I could borrow? I don’t wanna freak out the neighbors with all that blood.”

“You can have one of Steve’s,” Claire tells him. “The bathroom’s over there. You can clean yourself up, if you want.”

 _Who the hell is Steve?_ Piers wonders silently. Aloud, he mouths another ‘Thank you’.

Without looking back, Piers crosses the room and disappears into the small, windowless bathroom. The light bulb flickers, annoyingly so, so he lets the door open to let in as much of sunlight as possible as he turns on the faucet to fill the sink with water and soap. 

Still disbelieving, the first thing he does after taking off his bloody shirt is taking a closer look at his right arm. He holds it closer to the mirror, tracing the skin with the tips of his fingers. It’s like a miracle. It’s completely healed, no hints of the virus whatsoever. There’s no visible sign that it’s ever looked any differently at all.

 _Has it?_ Piers suddenly wonders. _Did all of that really happen?_

He leans forward, grips the sink with both hands to keep him steady. Where the hell is he, anyway? Is he dreaming? Is he dead? Is this some kind of fucked up version of heaven? Is any of this even _real_? 

“Piers? Here’s your shirt.”

Chris is standing in the doorway, in his fist a curled up plain black t-shirt that looks like it’s been neatly folded before, but now has been reduced to a wrinkly mess. Piers takes it from him, putting it down on top of the washing machine until he’s finished cleaning himself up.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see that Chris is still leaning against the frame, making no indication to move. Probably under Claire’s orders, to make sure that Piers doesn’t faint and hit his head on the sink or something. He can feel Chris staring, slowly becoming aware of the fact that he’s still shirtless. The look Chris is giving him resembles the way people tend to look at fire alarms. Drawn to it and overwhelmed by an unexplainable urge to push the button, even though their common sense is telling them not to. In the three years they’ve worked together, Chris never looked at him like that. 

Piers isn’t self-conscious about how he looks — and especially not now, with Chris being skinnier and smaller than Piers ever thought him capable of being. So he just reaches for a washcloth and tries to get rid of the dirt on his arms and the remnants of blood that are sticking to his neck, as if Chris wasn’t even there. 

“Do you need any help?” Chris eventually asks. 

“With washing myself?” Piers returns with a raised eyebrow. Despite everything, he feels a smirk forming on his face. “No, thanks, I’m good.”

He sees Chris turn his face away, trying to hide the color that’s rising in his cheeks.

Chris Redfield is blushing? This _definitely_ can’t be real. 

“So, what are you doing when you’re not knocking over strangers with your bike?” Piers tries to keep his tone as casual as he can manage. Better get as much first-hand info about this as he can. This Chris isn’t a pilot in the airforce, that much is clear. Not with this build. Maybe a desk job in the military? 

“You know STAGLA?”

“The gas station?”

“Yeah. I work at the garage next to it.” Piers’s gaze wanders down, and he sees that Chris is rubbing his hands, something he recognizes as a nervous tick the captain displays on rare occasions. Been a while since he’s seen it, though. Chris doesn’t get nervous often. “I’m a mechanic. I, uh, repair cars.”

All right, _that_ he didn’t expect. Piers shoots Chris a disbelieving look, then quickly regains his composure, hiding just how much that answer startled him. He’s not even in the military? What kind of version of Chris Redfield would not be out there saving lives, making a difference? _A mechanic_ , Piers repeats internally, barely suppressing the urge to scoff and shake his head. 

“And your sister? What does she do?”

“Studying medicine. She’ll be a pediatrician in a few years, if everything works out.” Piers nods. That sounds like her. “Didn’t she ever mention that you?”

Damn, Piers doesn’t even know how close he’s supposed to be with Claire. Are they friends? Close friends? Mere acquaintances? The latter seems more likely considering she doesn’t even know where he lives. But still, he can’t risk another slip like this, not without getting Chris worried, or worse, suspicious. 

“Must have slipped my mind,” Piers replies as nonchalantly as possible.

“It’s fine,” Chris says, waving off. “I just sometimes feel like she visits your mom’s café more often than she visits me. Figured you’d know our whole life story by now.”

Piers stops moving for a second. His mom’s _what_? His mother doesn’t own a café. She’s a high school teacher, teaching chemistry and math. She has for almost 30 years. The hell? This whole thing keeps getting weirder and more terrifying by the second. Maybe he should stop interrogating Chris and start digging into his own life instead. 

“Nah, she just told me one or two terribly embarrassing childhood stories of you,” Piers jokes, as if the whole thing doesn’t faze him. “You know the one time you accidentally— I’m just messing with you, Captain, don’t look so alarmed.”

“‘Captain’?” Chris echoes, furrowing his brow.

Shit. It’s gonna be difficult as hell to get rid of _that_ habit. “Your shirt?” Piers tries, indicating to it with a nod.

Chris inclines his head, looking down at the Captain America print on his shirt. “Oh, right.” 

 _Lucky_ , Piers thinks. _And far too close. Again._ It’s like this is a joke, and the entire world is in on it — except for him. And he hates it. Not knowing. Feeling so helpless. He really needs to get out of here and figure this out _now_. 

He reaches for the clean shirt on the washing machine, the movement a little bit too fast and jerky, and suddenly his knees feel like jelly, and Piers stumbles over his own feet, falling forwards.

Chris catches him just before he hits the ground, steadying him with a hand on his arm. “You sure you wanna take off already? You still seem a little shaky.” 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Piers says, getting up again. He looks back at Chris, still in close enough reach to him should Piers once again lose his balance. It almost makes him smile, seeing that familiarity of the look in Chris’s eyes. That layer of responsibility that’s so visible there. Grounded, steady. That’s _him_ , that’s _Chris_.

“I’m good,” Piers assures him, finally putting on that shirt. Steve’s shirt, Piers reminds himself, mentally making a note to remember the guy’s name. The shirt’s a bit too small, but he’s too exhausted to care. “Trust me, you running me over isn’t the worst thing that happened to me today.”

“Shit, what kind of day have you been having?”

“A long one,” Piers huffs out. “A long week, really. Not your fault.”

 _None of it is_ , Piers thinks. He doesn’t say it out loud, because this Chris isn’t the one who needs to hear it. No, that one is out of reach for him. Probably forever. As it should be.

He quickly turns away, hiding his face in the shadows of the small room, suddenly afraid of what Chris would be able to see if he looked into Piers’s eyes right now. 

Once he’s finished in the bathroom, Piers pats down his pants pockets for some kind of wallet, a set of keys, maybe a phone, anything that could have any information on it that might help him. He finds a car key fastened onto his keychain — Chevrolet, he sees, probably an older model — but that’s not gonna do him much good right now.

Finding his cell in one of his front pockets, Piers takes it out, checking the contacts for an entry with his own address as quickly as he can, eventually finding it listed under ‘Home’. Got it. 

* * *

 Thankfully, it’s not a long drive. Claire, Chris, and Steve live in a more rural area, in the outskirts of the city. Chris used to live in Tall Oaks, so Piers learns, but moved back home to their parents’ house in December last year. 

“The house is way too big for me and Steve alone,” Claire explains. “We used to rent the upper floor to students. Until my brother came back, anyway.”

Piers nods, keeping his gaze fixed on the scenery outside of the car window. They pass several shops, a tall building that looks to be either a hotel or a hospital, and even a park. Before Piers has the sense to try and decipher the name of the city, he gets distracted by a enormous clock tower that’s looming over the buildings. A strange sense of recognition nags at Piers, but no matter how hard he tries to figure it out, he just can’t seem to put his finger on what exactly is so familiar about it. Has he been here before? 

When Claire stops the car in front of a larger apartment complex — Piers can still see the huge church towering behind it — she directs a nod at the ten-story building before them. “Is that you?”

“Yeah,” Piers replies, though he has never seen the building before in his life. So far the clock tower is the only thing that’s even remotely jogging his memory. This is fine. Totally not concerning. Not concerning at all. “Thanks for the ride.”

“If you feel faint or anything happens — anything at all — you’ll call me, okay?” Claire insists, handing him a piece of paper with her number on it. 

“Will do.” 

“I still think you should go and get some check ups at the hospital. I don’t like leaving you all on your own.”

“I’ll be fine, Claire,” Piers says, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He knows she only means well. “Thanks again.”

Finding his apartment takes longer than he expected it to. It also involves a whole lot more stairs, navigating through hordes of baby strollers, and frantically scanning door bell tags than he ever could have anticipated. Jesus, how many people live in this building? 

Once he’s convinced he’s found the right door — on the highest floor up, _of course_ — Piers lets out a relieved sigh as soon as the key fits and the lock gives a click. Shutting the door behind him, he just leans back, closes his eyes, and rests his back against it, taking a few minutes to catch his breath and calm down. 

There’s gotta be a logical explanation for all of this. No matter what they had to face, there’s always been a logical explanation. 

He steps away from the door, taking in the view the small one-bedroom apartment offers. It’s plain and simple, with white-painted walls, not offering much comfort and containing only the most basic types of furniture. There are no pieces of clothing scattered around the room, no empty bottles, no dirty dishes, no magazines, no posters, nothing. Piers has always been someone who likes to keep things tidy, but this is bordering on ridiculous. It doesn’t even look like there’s someone living here. 

After wiping a finger over the smooth surface of a shelf, Piers sees that much about everything is covered with a thick layer of dust. Weird. The next thing that catches his attention is a bulletin board right next to the fridge, and on it several sticky notes with telephone numbers. His parents' number, his mom's cell, a doctor, a pizza place... Nothing of interest. 

He takes a look out of one of the windows, seeing the park from earlier there. It's crowded with people.

Accepting that there’s not much more info able to be gathered in the living room, Piers makes his way to what he believes to be his bedroom. The blinds are halfway down, and the glass door leading to the balcony left ajar. The double bed is covered with plain white sheets, neatly made up. Nothing special there. 

Piers turns around, letting out a little gasp at what he sees before him. He leaps forward, almost stumbling over his own feet. About a dozen of framed pictures have been placed on his drawer, the only real personal thing sticking out like a flashing neon sign among so much bleakness. He reaches for the one that immediately caught his attention, not even paying mind to the others for the time being. 

His throat tightens, and without really being aware of it, Piers lets his thumb trace over the dark curly hair, his other hand gripping the frame more tightly than he means to. Tries not to think about the fact that the last time he touched those curls, they were sticky with blood, the battered body in his arms already limp and lifeless. So still. So _unlike_ her.

Uncommonly, there are two photos in the frame. On the first, Merah is stuffing her mouth with some form of pasta, apparently entirely unaware of having her picture taken. The portion of food on her fork is way too large for the size of her mouth, and half of the spaghetti appears like it’s gonna fall down on the plate again any second now. 

Typical. At least that hasn’t changed. Despite himself, Piers feels the corners of his lips rise, the smile a little more wistful than he’s used to. 

Merah’s blurry hand takes up most of the picture next to that one, but in the background Piers can still see her laugh, and few patches of tomato sauce on her chin. Piers stares at it a moment longer, reluctant to let go. An idea dawns on him then, a ridiculously naive and foolish idea, but he’s gotta have hope, right? If Chris and Claire can be over 15 years younger than they’re supposed to be, then maybe... 

He turns the frame over, taking a look at the back of the pictures. 

_New York, February 2013._

He almost staggers backwards, nearly dropping the frame in his hand, catching it at the last second. This can’t be. The Marhawa Incident took place in 2012. And if he took these photos of Merah this year, then...

Then she’s still alive.

She never went with them to that university, she never pushed him out of the way, never took the hit that was meant for him, never took her last breaths with the touch of his hand wrapped tightly around her own. 

Reaching for his phone, Piers skims through his contact list, stopping when he finds Merah’s entry. The address listed under her name is located in Indonesia. Not giving a damn about time zones, Piers hits the call-button. Just to hear her voice. And maybe to ask for help. If someone is able to help him figure this out, it’s her. 

 _You needing her help_ , a small voice whispers in the back of his head, _isn’t that what caused her to end up dead the last time you were with her?_

Piers’s bottom lip starts to tremble, and he bites down on it, ending the call after the second ringing sound. Goddammit. This is no use. No need to drag her into this. It’s _his_ life that got completely turned around — making it _his_ problem to solve. His alone.

Carefully, Piers places the frame back to where it was, letting his gaze wander over the rest of the pictures. Some of them depict him with people he doesn’t recognize. Friends, probably. On one of them is Piers himself, with a beagle puppy sitting on his lap. But most of them are family photos, snapshots of holidays they’ve been to together. The Grand Canyon, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., fucking _Disneyland_. On a picture far to his right, a version of himself that can’t be older than fifteen — braces and zits and all — is staring back at him, standing in front of the gates of Buckingham Palace and wearing a sarcastic smirk, the eyes hidden behind sunglasses. His dad is next to him, wearing shorts and goddamn tennis socks in his sandals. He’s holding up a peace sign behind Piers’s head, grinning like he’s just pulled the greatest prank in history, his entire demeanor about ten times more lighthearted as Piers has ever witnessed it.

What the hell is wrong with this world? What’s next? A wife and a kid hiding in Piers’s closet? 

He’s never been to London before. Especially not with his dad. Hell, he doesn’t think he’s ever been _anywhere_ with his father before. Most of the time, his dad was gone, away on missions, deployed to God knows where, always prioritizing his work over his personal life.

He respects the man, of course he does, and on a professional level, Piers admires him greatly. He can’t remember a time in which he didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, and he’s glad for the on-going support his dad has given in over the years to achieve this goal. When he was a child, Piers used to idolize him, put him on an unattainable pedestal. But that’s part of growing up, he thinks. Realizing that your parents are just human after all.

And his father isn’t gonna win any dad of the year awards, that’s for sure. The stranger on the picture might, though. But that’s exactly what he is to Piers — a stranger. The realization leaves a taste of sourness lingering on his tongue. 

Moving away from the pictures, Piers catches sight of a laptop on the ground next to his bed, the charger still plugged in. Jackpot.

With the laptop on his lap, Piers sinks down onto his couch. There’s not much to be found on the hard-drive. Some more photos, some indie rock music, some R&B. His e-mail inbox has been cleared, and there aren’t any files on the computer that may lead to finding out what he does for a living exactly. All he finds is a shortcut to Netflix.com and some bills. What kind of awfully boring person _is_ he in this universe? Jesus. 

Piers sets his jaw, shoves the disappointment aside, and starts searching. Time to find some answers.

‘BSAA’ — nothing.

‘Terra Save’ — nothing.

‘Umbrella’ — nothing. At least nothing regarding the pharmaceutical concern from hell.

‘Tricell’ — nothing.

‘Bioterrorism’ — nothing.

He types in all the names of BSAA members he can remember. Most of them don’t even show up in the search results, but some do. As it seems, Rebecca Chambers is still a lecturer at the Philosophy University in Western Australia. When typing in ‘Jill Valentine’, he finds absolutely nothing. What kind of fucked-up world doesn’t have Jill Valentine in it? With Barry Burton, he only stumbles upon some local newspaper articles about some children soccer team in... _In Raccoon City?_

Piers sags back into his couch, releasing a surprised exhale. Well, it figures. If there’s never been a concern with the name of Umbrella and if there’s never been a bioterrorist attack before, then Raccoon City was never destroyed. An entire city, over 100.000 people, brought back to life, just like that. A piece of history — even if it’s a tragic one — simply eradicated. It’s hard to let that sink in. 

He hesitates before hitting enter on the next search, unsure of what he’s gonna find. Swallowing, Piers presses the button. Nothing much turns up. Not even a Facebook page, but somehow he didn’t expect Chris to change his opinion on social media, not even now that he’s so much younger.

Most of the links refer to _Claire_ Redfield instead of Chris — some science competitions, an article on a kickboxing class, a link to her Instagram page that’s mostly filled with memes and pictures of a dog he didn’t catch sight of when he’d been at her apartment. Probably been out with that Steve guy. Other than that, her page also features some photographs of Claire herself posing in front of a motorbike. Hers, Piers guesses. He thinks the captain mentioned that once. 

Piers has almost given up, when suddenly at the bottom of the search results another link catches his eye. He clicks on it, and it appears to be a newspaper article about a car crash in Tall Oaks dated some months back. 

_‘Fatal Accident On Christmas Eve Leaves 4 Men Dead, 1 Injured’_

A totaled car is pictured next to the text, the vehicle lying upside down on a snow-covered field, the wreckage beyond recognition. Piers can’t even decipher what kind of brand it is. Looking at the damage the crash caused, it’s a miracle someone even managed to walk out of there alive. 

Tearing his eyes away from the photograph, Piers starts reading, his eyes widening further with every processed word. 

_In the late hours of December 24th, 2012 a horrific car crash ended the lives of four young men. Benjamin Airhart (23†), Carl Alfonso (24†), Andrew Walker (22†), Finn Macauley (19†), and the driver of the vehicle, Christopher Redfield (25) were on their way home to their families when the tragic accident occurred. The cause still remains unclear, as Redfield, the only survivor of the crash, is believed to have suffered from post-traumatic-amnesia and could not give any reason as to why he lost control of the vehicle. The Tall Oaks Police Department has stated that—_

Piers stops, shutting the laptop close with probably more force than necessary. “Oh God, no.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.” — from _Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_

Piers doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there on his couch, with his tiny living room growing darker with each passing hour and the uncomfortably bright light of his laptop screen staring back at him. His back is hunched and hurting, and his eyes are swollen from pure exhaustion, but he remains so deep in thought that he never even notices. 

If Raccoon City was never wiped off the map, if there’s never been any incidents of bioterrorism before, and the BSAA never existed — where does that leave Piers? There are so many memories, _his entire life_. There’s no possible way he’s just imagined it all.

Either he’s lost his mind, or some form of higher power actually listened to his thoughts during those last moments in the underwater facility and decided to put him here, into some form of alternate reality.

Piers can’t decide which option is more terrifying. 

The pink-yellow hue of the sky outside his windows has already announced the soon arrival of dawn when he finally stumbles into the direction of his bedroom. Leaving a trail of clothes behind him, Piers crawls into bed with just his boxer shorts on, hitting the pillow face first. He doesn’t bother putting the covers over his body. It’s a hot July night anyway, and after the day Piers has had, even the thin blanket seems to weigh a ton. 

When he wakes, it’s to a buzzing sound. 

Groggy and still half-asleep, Piers instinctively pats down the bedside table for his phone, almost knocking over a lamp in the process.

“Yeah?”

“Piers?”

Opening his eyes in flash, Piers jolts upright. “Mom?”

“Piers, are you all right?” There’s an edge to his mother’s voice he’s never heard before. She sounds downright frantic. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home,” Piers grates. He holds the phone away from his mouth for a second and clears his throat, throwing a brief glance at the clock while doing so. 10:58 AM. “Sorry, I just woke up. Is something wrong?” 

“You didn’t call yesterday. Your dad and I were worried.”

Piers narrows his eyes at that. Sometimes he goes weeks without calling his parents. They never had a problem with it before — they know he’s busy, know that in his line of work time is scarce and there are a lot of other things on his mind than checking in at home. After all, he’s 26. Not exactly a kid anymore.

“Sorry,” Piers says again, pretending this display of unnecessary worry is entirely normal. “I had a lot going on yesterday.”

Understatement of the fucking year.

“But you’re okay?”

“Yes, Mom, really, _I’m fine_ ,” Piers repeats, barely able to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason,” his mother assures him, sounding a tad _too_ cheerful all of a sudden. “You know how mothers are. Worrying is our job.”

He doesn’t buy that excuse in the slightest, and he’s just about to ask again, when the ring of his door bell echoes through the apartment. Great, what _now_?

“Mom, I gotta hang up, there’s someone at the door.” Scrambling to his feet, Piers quickly makes his way to the front door. His clothes from yesterday are scattered around the floor, so he just half-heartedly picks them up with one hand and throws them into a pile onto the sofa. “But I’m gonna come by later, all right? Sometime this afternoon.”

“Yes, sure! I’ll make some pie.”

A smile finds its way onto his lips. “Which one?”

“Your favorite, of course.”

“Sounds great. I’m looking forward to it.” He stops before the door, just about to end the call, when a recent memory steals its way into his mind. A memory riddled with fear, and unshed tears, and regret. “I... I love you.”

“I love you too, honey.”

He remains standing on the spot, somehow unable to move. He’s been so freaked out by this whole thing that he never took the time to look at the opportunities that have been granted to him. Everything he regrets, everything he did wrong— He can undo that. He can seize the chances he should have taken, get a new shot at things he hesitated to do. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this is a second chance. A chance to do it all over. To do it right. 

Absentmindedly, Piers swings open the door, not bothering to take a peek through the spy-hole first to see who it is.

“Are you doing that on purpose?” 

Feeling like he’s just been rendered speechless for the very first time in his life, Piers just gapes at Chris, dumbfounded. “What?”

Chris untangles his crossed arms — _Christ, they’re so skinny_ — and makes a vague motion towards Piers’s torso. “The whole shirtless thing. I’m starting to feel like the shirt you ruined yesterday was the only one you owned. You left it in the bathroom when you hurried out of there, by the way.”

Still a bit dazed, Piers draws together his eyebrows, biting his bottom lip in an attempt to cover up his momentary fluster. He steps away from the door, trusting Chris to let himself in, and heads straight to the coffee machine. He’s gonna need caffeine to deal with this. A whole damn lot of caffeine. Thank God it’s a pad machine. He doesn’t think he would have the necessary patience for anything different right now.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Piers asks without turning around. “At the... At the garage?” 

“It’s Sunday.”

“Right. No work on Sundays.” At least not for normal people. “Want some coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Jesus Christ, why is there no milk in his fridge? Annoyed and already feeling done with everything, Piers closes the door shut with a dull thud and throws a glance over his shoulder, seeing Chris leaning against the kitchen counter. “So, what are you doing here? Decided to do some charity and give me back my last remaining shirt?”

“Claire was worried,” Chris returns. There’s a pause, and his next words are spoken so dryly that Piers doesn’t catch the insinuation, not right away. “And I’m not giving you your shirt back.”

Piers nods, taking a large sip of hot coffee. God, this feels good. Even if it’s bitter as hell. “ _She_ was worried, huh? So she sent _you_ to check up on me?”

“She said she has to go to class.”

Piers raises his eyebrows, hiding his smirk behind the rim of his mug. “On a Sunday?”

Chris narrows his eyes, as if only now realizing the flaw in that logic. “Well, maybe I was worried too.”

“Right. And why exactly have you decided to keep my shirt hostage?” Piers wants to know, and, remembering the way Chris practically ogled him back at Claire’s place, he adds, “Liking the sight of me not wearing one?”

Piers watches one corner of Chris’s mouth curl up into a half-smile, feeling a stir in his chest at the sight that has nothing to do with the fresh influx of caffeine in his system. Technically, Chris is still his superior, his partner, his _friend —_ even if the guy doesn’t know it. All right, maybe Piers liked the way Chris looked at him — still looks at him. But so what? It doesn’t mean he should act on it. He’s not even _interested,_ for fuck’s sake. What the hell is he even _doing_?

“Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to give you a reason to come round again,” Chris replies, and Piers struggles to come to terms with the fact that Chris is _flirting right back_.

He’s so different. So lighthearted. So terribly _young_. 

Piers puts down his now empty mug and presses his lips together, thinking how all of this would be so much easier if it wasn’t Chris standing before him, but just a normal stranger, someone he doesn’t have so much history with. Then Piers wouldn’t have this uncomfortable feeling lingering in his gut, that’s telling him that this is wrong, that this isn’t Chris, not really. 

“I was actually going out just now,” Piers interjects quickly. “Grocery shopping. Coffee without cream tastes like shit.”

If Chris is taken aback by Piers’s sudden backpedalling, he doesn’t show it. “I dunno, I like it black.”

 _I know_ , Piers wants to say, so badly that it nearly hurts to remain silent. Instead, he makes his way to the sofa where yesterday’s clothes are heaped up into a pile. He’s probably in need of a shower, too, but he really doesn’t give a shit anymore — he just wants to get out of here, out of this unfamiliar apartment, out of all this bleakness, this confusion.

“Mind if I join you?” Chris asks, obliviously. 

“Why, did Claire also tell you to babysit me?”

Chris furrows his brow, now actually seeming surprised at Piers’s change of tone. And of course he is — nothing of Piers’s erratic behavior must make any lick of sense to Chris. God, it’s just like Edonia. As if Chris forgot about him all over again.

“What? No. No, I just still need to buy some stuff for tonight. And if you’re going anyway...”

Piers exhales, already regretting being so abrasive. This isn’t Chris’s fault, he reminds himself. No need to be such an asshole.

“What’s tonight?” he asks, making an effort at letting his genuine interest shine through this overwhelming irritation he still can’t manage to get rid of.

“It’s Steve’s birthday today,” Chris explains, matter-of-factly, as if Piers never snapped at him at all. “He and Claire are out to eat dinner later with his dad, so Rich put me in charge of buying beer and snacks. And, you know, invite some friends over to cheer him up when they come back.”

 _Rich._ Gotta add that to the list of the names that should probably be familiar. 

“He doesn’t get along with his dad?” Piers concludes. "Steve?" 

“Nah, not really. They’ve only started talking to each other again not so long ago. It’s a long story.”

In the end, Piers is glad Chris tagged along. It’s not as if he would have found the grocery store this quickly on his own, anyway. Talking with Chris is easier than he expects it to be, and after a time the prior awkwardness ebbs away, and the conversations seem to begin to flow all on their own. It just comes so naturally.

Piers almost forgets his confusion, his anger. Chris has always made him feel safe, in a way, and even now he manages to keep Piers calm, level-headed. 

Despite everything, Chris is still the same person, Piers realizes. A bit rougher around the edges, not as steadfast as the captain he’s known for so many years now. He’s lighter in every sense of the word, laden with juvenile energy, undefined and lacking any form of abrasiveness. Free of the bitterness the decades of loss and fighting have scarred him with, though not entirely. Here and there he even _laughs_ , a sound Piers has heard far too seldom over the years.

Once they’re done with shopping and bought everything they need, Piers suddenly finds it harder to say goodbye than he likes to admit. He shoots a glance at Chris, seeing the other man’s steps grow smaller and smaller, until he comes to a halt and the two of them keep lingering in front of the exit of the store, both unwilling to go on and go their separate ways.

Piers flick his tongue over his lips, barely able to suppress a smirk while his fingers play with the plastic handle of his shopping back. 

Chris is looking back at him, the hand raised to the back of his neck, rubbing the skin there. Another one of those nervous ticks. “Do you want to...?”

“Yeah.”

A smile. “Good.”

They have lunch at Pizza Hut, sharing one of those huge pizzas with bacon stuffed crust. Piers indulges himself, ordering soda instead of water, eating more of the greasy pizza than he would ever allow himself to, normally. Because what’s the point in trying to eat healthy now? It’s not like it matters anymore. He doesn’t _need_ to be fit. He’s not gonna do any fighting or running from BOWs any time soon. 

Chris tells him about his time in Tall Oaks, how he enrolled as a business major, but ended up hating it. Recalling the newspaper article he stumbled upon last night, Piers suspects there’s more to the reason why Chris left the city so suddenly and decided to move back home, but he remains quiet about it. He can’t imagine Chris would want to talk about the accident anyway — Piers is still a stranger to him, after all. The reminder gives him a sting, and he quickly reaches for his glass of coke, hiding his grimace behind it.

“I just can’t imagine spending my entire life stuck behind a desk, you know?” Chris says, taking a bite of his last slice of pizza.

“Yeah, I know.” _More than you know._ “But your job at the garage? That’s something you can imagine doing for the rest of your life?”

“No, that’s... that’s just temporary. Until I found something else. Something that fits.” 

Piers nods, somehow glad that this Chris is at least not without ambitions. Makes the whole mechanic thing less shocking than it initially seemed. 

“And you?” Chris asks, wiping his hands with a napkin. “You don’t seem like the type whose dream job is waiting tables at his mom’s café.”

Oh for Christ’s sake, _that’s_ what he does? “Well, what do you think my dream job would be?”

“The way you move and the way you hold yourself is practically screaming military.”

Piers forms a half-hearted smile. He opens his mouth, intending to say that this is exactly what he wants to do, when all of a sudden he hesitates, closing his mouth shut again. Yes, being a soldier is everything he ever wanted, for as long as he can remember. There’s never been a doubt about it, not for him, not for his family. But now? In this version of his life, he’s never been to an elite military academy, he’s never been in the Special Forces. The BSAA doesn’t even _exist_. Everything has been eradicated, wiped clean. He can do everything over, can start a new life. But as what?

“I don’t know yet,” Piers says out loud, and it’s the truth. He’s got absolutely no clue about what he’s gonna do. “I’m just as lost as you, I guess.”

“Well, there’s still time.”

Piers nods again, trying not to think about the last time Chris assured him of that fact. 

The two of them go to the park after that — the one Piers so far has only seen through his window. They don’t even talk about going there, particularly. They just put one foot after another, falling into step without taking any note of it, too caught up with one another to notice anything else around them really — and in the end the park is the place their feet have carried them to.

After walking up the stone stairs, Piers comes to a sudden stop in front of the park sign right next to the entrance, now fully understanding the idiom of one's heart dropping. Because he feels like his own just dropped right down onto the bottom.

_Raccoon Park._

Piers whirls around, fixing his eyes on the sight of the huge clock tower behind them, finally recognizing the building. 

“Hey, you okay?” Chris asks, reaching out to touch Piers’s upper arm briefly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

 _I’m the ghost_ , Piers thinks. 

Though it’s the beginning of July, it’s a mild summer day, neither too hot, nor too cold. The balance creates the perfect weather, causing the park to be overcrowded with families, groups of teenagers, and here and there a couple. The sound of bird chirping is subdued by children screams and laughter, once or twice with a dog bark mingled in-between. The scent of freshly mowed grass hangs in the air, that and something that Piers indistinctly places as the smell of summer. He can feel rays of sunlight tickling his skin, making him feel warm enough that the occasional breeze of wind doesn’t bother him.

But it isn’t the cold that’s giving him goosebumps. 

He looks around, and every person he lays his eyes own sends unpleasant tingles down his spine. It’s like a dream really, bright and nice and full of life — but all Piers can think of is that it feels like he’s in the middle of a ghost town, stuck in some horror movie, sitting right in the midst of a city that’s supposed to have been blown to pieces almost 15 years ago. 

_You’re all supposed to be dead._

_And me too._

In the distance, the faint echo of rushing water can be heard. The fountains burble in a steady rhythm, and some might say the whole thing contains a peaceful and even somewhat calming quality. Piers always found those pieces of architecture beautiful, especially when he was a kid. Way back then, he used to stop at every fountain he and his mom crossed paths with, standing in front of them in pure awe and a fascination that seems so unique to children, watching the way the water jets into the air, sometimes accompanied by colored lights or with splashes flying several feet into the air.

That was before. Now? Now, the _mere sound_ of splashing water overwhelms him with a sense of anxiety he’s only ever felt in the worst of times with the BSAA. For a terrifying second, he feels like he’s back in the underwater facility, seeing Haos swimming towards the escape pod, his pulsating arm at his side, more monster than human, and the wish to just _die_ growing stronger and stronger—

Piers curls his fingers around his right wrist, digging the nails into it, focussing on the pain until the images finally start to grow weaker and eventually subside. He leans back and lets himself sink down onto the ground, resting his head on his arms, all while hoping that Chris doesn’t notice any of it.

It’s so strange, Piers thinks. He’s never imagined doing this with Chris — doing _nothing_ , just lying on the grass and enjoying the sun on a lazy Sunday afternoon. He doesn’t believe that the thought ever even occurred to them. There’s never been time, no real opportunity. 

Now, Chris is sitting propped up against a tree, the legs outstretched before him. He’s wearing a pair of shades, his body posture as relaxed as Piers has ever seen it, and that added to the amount of time they’ve spent in comfortable silence lets Piers wonder whether Chris simply dozed off somewhere along the line.

There’s a wayward ray of sunshine illuminating the crown of his head, hitting the strands of hair just the right way — and Piers catches himself waiting, anticipating almost. But nothing happens. They remain brown. 

It makes him wonder if that’s just another thing he’s only imagined. 

“I can see you staring, you know.”

Without him really meaning to, Piers’s lips give a twitch. It’s crazy, he thinks, that no matter how shaken or angry he is, it just takes a few words from Chris to clear his head and bring him back down to earth again. It’s something he could always rely on, and still can, it seems. But a part of him can’t help but feel terrified — terrified of how much power this one single person has over him. 

Because if Chris has the ability to put the broken pieces back together, doesn’t that mean he can also pull Piers apart again just as easily?

He hates feeling terrified. Fear isn't something that's rational. And if it isn't rational, it can't be controlled. 

“I thought you were asleep," Piers replies eventually.

Chris takes off the sunglasses, tucking them on the rim of his shirt. There’s a challenging glint in those blue eyes Piers recognizes from the sparring the two of them do occasionally. He’s never been able to beat Chris, and a part of him has always been frustrated by the fact. 

_I bet I could beat you now._

“If you were thinking about stealing the chips — don’t.”

“Are you serious? I wasn’t!”

“Don’t lie to me. You’ve been eyeing that bag ever since we left the store, Nivans.”

“I don’t even like chips.”

“Mhm,” Chris makes, clearly unimpressed. “Try to get them. I dare you.”

Piers’s lips curl into a smirk. “I’d have them before you’d even managed to move a muscle.”

“I bet I’m still faster than you.”

It’s so juvenile and _silly_ , Piers thinks and vaults to his feet as fast as he can, dashing into the direction of the larger grocery bag with gritted teeth. Chris is quicker than he’s anticipated, already now clearly closer to reaching the bag than Piers is. Damn. Knowing he’s lost — and being a sore loser and a bit of an asshole — Piers does the only thing he can do, which is bolt over into the other direction to knock over Chris instead and successfully fling him away from the bag of chips. 

“Shit,” Chris breathes, letting his head fall back into the grass with a thud. “This is payback for running you over, isn’t it?”

“Nah, what makes you say that?” 

Chris laughs, and Piers can feel the other man’s chest rumble underneath him. “You bastard.”

Piers grins down at Chris, taking a moment to cherish that triumphant feeling of _finally_ having beaten him. And keeping him there. Normally, the captain would have turned the outcome of the brawl in a matter of mere seconds, and it would be Piers lying there in the grass now, begrudgingly forced to accept his defeat.

But Chris doesn’t seem like he’s gonna turn this around anytime soon. He’s already panting, Piers realizes, from laughter and sprinting alike, and he’s— and he’s not even fighting to get out of Piers’s ironclad grip.

Suddenly the whole things turns into something entirely different, as Piers’s grin dies on his lips, and his mouth goes dry, and he watches Chris’s laughter slowly transform into a smile. Not a wide and teeth-showing one, nothing nearly that blatant. It’s a subtle kind, almost kind of absent, as if Chris isn’t even aware of doing it. 

Christ, he’s really beginning to fall in love with that smile.

Before he has the chance to fully understand _that_ perplexing train of thought, a buzzing in his pants pocket shakes him back to reality, sobering him up within a matter of seconds. 

Becoming aware of Chris still being trapped underneath his weight, Piers quickly releases him and puts his ringing cell to his ear, paying no mind to the racing beat of his heart.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Piers, this is Merah. You called yesterday?”

Piers freezes in place, pretty sure his heart missed a beat just now. He throws a quick glance to his right, seeing Chris watching him with a concerned expression, the hands absently wiping the patches of grass off his jeans. 

“Piers? You still there?”

“Yes, sorry, I’m here. Wait a sec.” He gets up, mumbling a vague apology to Chris, and makes his way to a quieter corner of the park. He stops in front of a shed which appears to store gardening tools and rests his back against the wooden wall, suddenly unsure if his knees are gonna hold him upright for much longer. He sucks in a deep breath before he raises the phone again, as if that would make the whole thing any easier to bear.

So often he thought about dialing number after it happened, knowing he’d reach her voicemail, be able to hear her voice. He soon realized that it was a stupid notion. She was dead. She wasn’t coming back. Listening to an old recording of her voice wouldn’t change a thing. And now...

“Okay, I’m here. Shoot.”

“ _You_ called _me_ ,” Merah laughs. “Was there anything important?”

“No. No, nothing important at all. I just thought I needed your help with something. But I figured it out myself,” Piers lies. “So it’s fine.”

“Oh, all right.”

“Yeah.” Piers closes his eyes for a moment, pinching the back of his nose. “And you? Are you all right? How’ve you been?”

“I’m _exhausted_ ,” Merah says, with so much playful exaggeration that Piers feels his throat tighten at the whole familiarity of it. “Can you imagine— My parents have only been here for three days. Three days! But they’re already driving me insane. God, I wish you were here.”

“Your _parents_?” Piers exclaims, before he can stop himself. It does make sense — Merah’s parents can’t have died in the destruction of Raccoon City if the town was never annihilated. Another plus side to this entire complicated mess of a situation, at least.

“You know, that middle-aged woman who’s always prepared to argue with you despite being more than two heads shorter than you? And the not-much-taller guy who keeps calling you his favorite son-in-law though I don’t have any siblings and we are certainly not dating, least of all married? Ring a bell?”

“Yeah,” Piers rasps. “Not that easy to forget.”

He listens to Merah ramble without interrupting, without being able to interrupt. He’s speechless, still having to come to terms with the fact that this is _real_ , that she’s here on the other end of the phone line, _alive_. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to go all word vomit on you,” Merah says after a time. “I’m sure you’ve got places to be.”

“Yeah, I’m actually with someone right now.”

“Well, then I don’t want you to keep your date waiting any longer.”

“It’s not a date.”

“Whatever you say.”

He’s just about to let her hang up, let this go and be done with it, before he has the chance to do anything stupid. 

“It was nice to hear your voice.” Yeah, something stupid like _that_.

“Piers? Did something happen?”

“What? No. Why, what makes you say that?”

“You sound a bit... chocked,” Merah tries, hesitating. There’s a pause, and for a few seconds all Piers is able to hear is the weighty silence on the other end of the line. “As if you’ve been crying, or are just about to.”

“I’m fine,” Piers says, for what feels like the hundredth time. Maybe if he says it once more he’ll actually believe it. “My throat’s a bit itchy. I think I’m getting one of those summer colds or something. Nothing to worry about.”

He thinks about coughing, just to prove his point, but quickly discards the idea again. Merah isn’t an idiot. No need to overdo it.

They do say their goodbyes after that, Merah a bit more warily than he likes. It’s clear that she doesn’t believe his excuse, but she also doesn’t push him to talk, for which Piers is grateful. He’d have no idea on how to even begin to explain. That, and he doesn’t want her to think he’s nuts — though, by all Piers knows, he probably _is_. 

When he returns to Chris, the weather has slowly begun to turn. Gray clouds have moved to cover the sun and are now looming over the park like a precursor for the storm that’s undoubtedly about to follow. He sees that Chris has already packed their things together, standing next to the tree he’s been sitting against earlier, ready to leave.

“Bad news?” Chris asks, handing Piers his shopping back. 

“Good news, actually.” Distant thunder rumbles, and Piers’s eyes briefly flicker to the dark sky above in apprehension. “I thought I had lost... contact with someone. It was a bit of a surprise to hear her voice after so much time. I never thought I’d actually speak to her ever again.”

“Did it end badly between you two?”

“Yeah, you can say that,” Piers replies, thinking that ‘bad’ doesn’t even remotely begin to cut it. “It was my fault. I screwed up, and she took the fall for it. You know, one of those things you can’t undo, no matter how much you wish you could.”

“Yeah, I know.” Chris briefly looks away, a twinge of hurt flashing over his features, and Piers knows exactly what’s going on in Chris’s head right now. It’s not fair, he thinks angrily. Raccoon’s destruction has been undone, and Merah’s death, and Umbrella and the evil they did, and everything that followed — all those terrible things never happened, and Chris still has to suffer and live with this inescapable weight of guilt and self-loathing he puts on himself. It’s not fucking fair.

“And now she forgave you?” Chris wants to know, and just in that moment the first splash of rain falls on Piers’s cheek, soon followed by another. They immediately quicken their pace, holding their bags over their heads in a vain attempt to shield themselves from the water.

“If you’d ask her, she’d say that there’s nothing to forgive.”

“Sounds like a complicated relationship.”

“No, we weren’t— We weren’t dating,” Piers returns, and just as the words have left his mouth he begins wondering why the hell he even felt the need to make that distinction clear to Chris. “She’s a friend.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The rain is falling merciless now, the drops hitting the pavement like bullets. More people are streaming out of the park, trying to find shelter, since only a few had the mind to bring an umbrella. Piers stops in his tracks, a few yards before the park entrance, and lets the mass of people pass him by, not seeing the point in trying to run from the rain any longer. They’re drenched to the bone anyway, and their clothes are already clammy and clinging to their skin, dripping with water.

The wetness makes him uncomfortable, more than he wants to show, but he forces himself to keep it together and get over himself. The water isn’t what killed him, Piers reminds himself. The C-Virus did.

He throws a brief glance to the watch on his wrist, wiping away a few drips of water from the glass to properly see the numbers. It’s past 5 already. If he still wants to visit his parents today, he should probably do it now — and shower and change first. Considering how much his mom freaked out over him not calling, he doesn’t even want to imagine how she’s gonna react if Piers shows up there looking like a homeless person. God, he hopes he’s not in for any more unpleasant surprises. 

Saying goodbye to Chris feels like letting go of a lifeline in the middle of the ocean. For those past few hours, the familiar presence of his captain was what kept him grounded, kept him from drowning in this overwhelming sea of confusion. The only constant Piers could hold onto. 

Is that what it was like in Edonia? Piers wonders silently. Is that how Chris felt like in those six months — lost, without any sense of purpose or belonging? As if he’s gone astray a path he never meant to leave, without knowing how to get back?

Then they say their goodbyes, and this is it. It’s over. Again.

Piers remains standing where he is, watching Chris leave— and he _is_ just about to leave, when at the last second he turns again, sparking a flutter of hope in Piers’s chest. “Some friends of mine are meeting up at Jack’s Bar on Friday night. Do you... Do you wanna come? I figured I still owe you a drink after knocking you out yesterday. To, you know, properly apologize.”

“Sure, why not?” Piers says casually, as if this kind of discourse is entirely common for them to have. Internally, he feels like a weight has been lifted off him, and his dread instantly gives way to relief. Relief that he’s got a reason to see Chris again, relief this isn’t goodbye for good. It’s the assurance he needed so badly. 

“Good,” Chris says, forming _that_ smile again. “Good. Then I’ll see you on Friday. We’ll be there at 9.”

“Friday.”

* * *

 When Piers pulls up at his parents’ house later, he’s glad to see nothing’s really changed. Everything’s still in its bound place, right were it’s supposed to be. The same red ivy-covered bricks, the same tall oak tree just out front of the kitchen window, the same porch with that lonely wooden swing his mom always sits on in the evening. The lawn is trimmed neatly and tidy, just like his dad likes it.

Going in, Piers soon realizes that beneath this flawless facade, everything’s crumbling. 

It starts with meeting his dad in the kitchen, wearing a goddamn _apron_. Piers has never — not once in 26 years — seen his father lift a finger in this kitchen, and now he stands there looking like fucking Gordon Ramsay himself. Maybe with less of a temper. Piers raises his eyebrows at the sight, wanting to say something, anything, finding himself once more at loss for words. The next thing is his dad coming over to him, _scurrying_ over to him, and pulling him into tight, bone-crushing hug, followed by several well-measured claps on Piers’s back. 

What. The. Fuck.

He’s not sure how he must look to his dad right now — the eyes wide, the mouth agape, the body stiff with bewilderment. But the smile in front of him remains unwavering, every feature on his face cheery and free of any sense of the usually underlying trouble or deprecation.

“You’ve got excellent timing, Son,” his dad sing-songs. Yes. He sing-songs. Piers still struggles to believe it himself. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

He’s getting pampered by parents, far more than he’s used to, and far more than he’s really comfortable with. His dad forces him to tell him everything about the day he’s had — not in that authoritative, commanding way Piers is used to when talking to his father. No, more in a ‘I’m gonna be real sad if you don’t tell me’-way. He’s so exorbitantly _gleeful_. Piers doesn’t know how to deal with this. 

Piers sits at the table, glaring at it like it’s a battlefield and every wrong movement could mean his death. 

“Piers, could you please pass me the potatoes?”

“Yes, sir— _Dad_.”

Barely dodged _that_ landmine. 

Once dinner time is over, Piers feels like he’s just survived a particularly hard day in the field, and is now in desperate need of a break. Exhaustion weighs him down, and he can feel the sweat running down his neck and his spine, making his shirt stick to his skin. When his mom brings out the freshly baked pie out of the oven for dessert, Piers almost starts crying with happiness. He gets pretty close there, with his throat growing tight and the wetness welling up on the rim of his eyes, nearly spilling actual tears. That’s how goddamn tired he is. 

He cuts off a bit of pie with his fork, almost dropping it when he sees the filling.

“...Apple.”

His mom nods eagerly, quickly swallowing down the food before saying, “I told you I’d make your favorite, didn’t I?” 

Piers forces a smile, guiding a piece of pie to his mouth. It’s one of those little details again, just like with Chris’s eye color. Brown, green, blueberry, apple. Just a slight, seemingly insignificant difference, and still it leaves a bitter taste on Piers’s tongue and an uneasy twist in his gut.

It’s not the flavor that bothers him so much. It’s the wrongness of it. As if he’s living inside of those riddles you find in magazines, where there’s a copy of a picture on which everything’s almost _exactly_ the same, and you have to find the few well-hidden mistakes. 

He looks back at his mom, seeing her eye him with a look he knows all too well. It’s a mixture of calculation and worry, the same one she gives his dad whenever he’s pouring himself a glass of bourbon. Not this version of his dad, obviously. 

From that point on, Piers tries to bring himself to remain focused. He goes over the shift plans for the café with his mom, glad to finally know when and where exactly he’s gotta turn up for work next week. He plays with Sam — who turns out to be the beagle pup from one of the picture on the drawer in his bedroom. It takes a while to win the dog’s trust, and his mom gives him another _look_ when Sam first barks at him and refuses to come when Piers calls him. As if he is able to _sense_ that Piers doesn’t belong here. 

Soon, evening approaches, cloaking the sky outside in the soft glow of twilight. It’s the sign Piers takes to finally get the hell out of this place. All of this — his mom’s worry-filled glances that constantly follow him around, his father’s plastic cheerfulness, this entire fussy act they two of them put on — it makes him feel dependent, and weak. It makes him feel like a child. 

His dad offers (pushes, more like it) Piers to stay the night — in his childhood bedroom, which, in this reality at least, stills exists and has not been turned into an office the second he moved out — but Piers declines as politely as he can manage. He doesn’t believe he succeeds. Being polite has never been his strong suit. But honestly, if he stays here any longer, he’s gonna suffocate. 

Once he’s driven back to his apartment, he remains seated in his Camaro, the motor turned off and the radio filling the car with the soft, relaxing tunes of Frank Ocean’s ‘Forrest Gump’. Piers leans back in his seat, actually closing his eyes for a moment and quietly humming along to the beat, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. 

There’s something unexplainably calming about sitting in a car at night, just parked somewhere and listening to some music. As if the world stands still for a while.

Then his phone vibrates in his pocket, breaking the spell in an instant.

Piers scowls, overflowing with annoyance already. “Can’t I have _one second_ of peace? Hell.”

He pulls the cell out of his pocket, only now seeing that’s it not a call at all, but a text. And not from his parents, like he expected, but from someone else entirely.

 

From: Chris

8:46 PM

Screw waiting till Friday. Wanna have lunch together tomorrow?

 

Piers lets out a quick snort through his nose, firmly ignoring that weird flutter of excitement in his chest. He’s just about to reply, when his phone buzzes once more.

 

From: Chris

8:47 PM

My treat.

 

To: Chris

8:48 PM

Wow. You really do feel bad about that bike incident, huh? 

 

From: Chris

8:51 PM

Is that a yes?

 

To: Chris

8:53 PM

Yes. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "For a while I thought I was the dragon. I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was the princess, cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle, young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with confidence  
> but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess, while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire, and getting stabbed to death.  
> Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.  
> You still get to be the hero." — from _Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_

“He’s so obnoxious,” Steve says, not for the first time this evening. 

“At least he’s trying,” Claire tries to appease him, also not for the first time this evening.

“Yeah, took him long enough,” Steve spits. “And now he’s acting like he deserves some kind of medal for finally doing it! He’s the one that screwed everything up in the first place, not me, not Mom. Fucking obnoxious bastard.”

Piers stopped listening to the kid’s rant about 15 minutes ago. He supposes he should feel bad about it, but he doesn’t. Apart from not knowing when to shut up and let it go, the guy has the squeakiest voice Piers has ever come across. He’s kind of irritating as well, and not really someone Piers would be friends with — but it’s more than obvious that Claire loves him, and that reason alone makes Piers think that Steve can’t possibly be _that_ bad. He’s probably one of those people you gotta know better to fully appreciate them. 

Piers’s phone buzzes in his hand, and he instantly forgets his annoyance and forms a light smile.

 

From: Chris

9:55 PM

Was that ‘obnoxious’ number 4?

 

To: Chris

9:56 PM

I’m counting 5.

 

To: Chris

9:56 PM

At least now you know what you can get him for his next birthday.

 

From: Chris

9:57 PM

What’s that?

 

Quickly looking up the link to ‘The Creative Insults Handbook’, Piers sends it to Chris and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms as he waits for the reaction. Chris’s previously blank, expressionless face turns into a smirk as he looks up and shakes his head at Piers, before looking down at his phone again to type a response.

Piers’s eyes briefly flicker to across the table where Claire is watching them like a hawk, partly disapproving, partly amused. 

 

From: Chris

10:00 PM

Is that what you got for your last birthday?

 

To: Chris

10:01 PM

I have no idea what you’re talking about, you rectal nutsack.

 

He can see Chris burst into a coughing fit, nearly spitting out the sip of beer he just swallowed. Piers looks away, hiding a grin behind his own bottle. 

Steve stops his rambling mid-sentence, staring at them, evidently confused. Claire clears her throat, not-so-gently nudging her brother in the ribs with her elbow.

Apparently seeing this as his chance to change the topic and the mood, Richard ( _the_ Richard, STARS Richard, who’s supposed to have died almost two decades ago — but honestly, what’s one more ghost amongst many?) clears his throat, solemnly looking around the table. Then, he pulls his girlfriend Bridgette closer to him, sharing a look with her just before he moves on to announce that the two of them are expecting.

He drops that bombshell in that quiet, soft voice of his, without any preamble, just like that, like he’s merely talking about the weather, and not something as life-changing as having a child. The smile on the guy’s face on the other hand couldn’t possibly be any wider.  Piers has never seen a person radiate so much happiness with just a smile.

“It’s been a while since we were all together, so we thought tonight is the best and most personal opportunity to tell you.”

Silence falls over the group. Claire is the first one to recover, getting up and hurrying over to Bridgette to draw her into a hug, congratulating her and Richard.

“Expecting?” Chris echoes, looking at Richard and Bridgette with bewilderment as if he’s only just now noticed them being in the room.

“A baby, Redfield,” Forest says. “They’re expecting a baby.”

“Yeah, of course,” Chris says, shaking his head at himself. “Wow. That’s— That’s... Wow. A baby. Congratulations, Rich.”

“Thanks, Chris.”

“How far along are you?” Claire wants to know, and everyone’s eyes immediately dart to Bridgette’s belly, making her roll her eyes and giving them a look. Doesn’t do anything to lessen the smile on her face, though. She’s practically beaming. “Do you already have a date?”

“And how are you gonna fit in your wedding dress now?” 

“Shut up, Forest,” echoes around the table in unison. 

“What? It’s a fair question!”

More questions, and more hugging, and more compliments and well-wishes ensue. It seems everyone’s lighthearted tonight, and even Steve manages to crack a smile somewhere along the line. 

It’s so apparent that these people belong together. They’ve probably known each other for years, been living in the same town since forever, have met in this very bar countless times before tonight. They are more than just friends, Piers thinks. They’re a family.

It makes him think of his own family — not his parents, but the BSAA. He wonders what they’re doing now. What Chris is doing now. _His_ Chris. Did they have a funeral — a funeral without a body like they had for Finn, Ben, Andy, and Carl? Did Chris go? Did he retire, or did he keep going like Piers wanted him to? What evil is haunting the world now, now that Haos is defeated? Have they managed to extract a cure from Jake’s blood yet? He hopes so— even if it’s too late to do _him_ any good. 

Bitterness spreads through his gut, and anger, too. And, no matter how much Piers hates to admit it, there’s sadness there as well. The longing kind.

Piers keeps his smile in place — he really doesn’t want his sulking to taint Richard’s and Bridgette’s happiness, especially since they seem like good and extraordinarily kind people — but inside he feels a sudden surge of tiredness coming over him. And not that kind you can battle with sleep. 

Piers empties his beer in one go, already ordering another one. He doesn’t know how many he’s had tonight, but he knows this isn’t the last.

He rarely drinks any alcohol, not even when he’s on leave or when he’s been out with the other men from Alpha Team. He’s been around his dad often enough to see what it can do. He’s seen what it did to Chris — someone he once believed to be like a mountain, unwavering and incorruptible. 

But today, Piers likes the way the beer makes him feel warm and fuzzy inside, enveloping him like armor, like nothing can hurt him. The more he drinks, the more he drowns the sadness, the dark thoughts that keep clawing at his mind and don’t let him sleep at night. 

The night grows old, and gradually, the table gets emptier. Bridgette and Richard take off first, and then later Forest, until it’s only Claire, Steve, Chris, and Piers sitting at the table. They laugh and talk and drink, and Piers doesn’t have to think, and it’s great, the way Chris smiles at him whenever Piers leans forward to touch his arm or shoulder when they’re talking, with their knees brushing now and then. It’s all so easy.

It’s well past midnight when Piers is on his way to the restroom. He has to hold onto the wall to steady him, only now fully realizing how drunk he really is. Fuck. Indistinctly, he can hear agitated voices not far from him. Piers turns, feeling the world spin as he does so, and seeks out the source of the arguing, instinct and habit drawing him closer to it. 

A few meters away from the restrooms, Piers can see three guys crowded around a girl, surrounding her and apparently not letting her pass through. 

“I’ve already said that I’m not interested,” the girl says.

“Why, is your boyfriend here?” 

“No, I’m just _not interested_. Now let me through. Please.” Piers can see that she’s trying to appear strong and unfazed, but at the last word her voice cracks slightly, and the underlying layer of fear shines through her eyes. 

“But what about some fun?” one guy sputters, eyeing the girl as if she’s a piece of meat instead of a human being. Disgusting. And dangerous. Piers takes a step closer to their direction, ready to step in.

“You’ve gotta be interested in _fun_ , right?” The man keeps talking at the girl, still refusing to let her leave. His speech is sluggish, and Piers is barely able to understand a word of it, but the meaning is clear. 

When the girl tries to brush past them, one of the men grabs her by the arm, forcefully keeping her in place.

“Let me go!”

All right, that’s enough.

Piers strides forward with large steps, a bit more unsteadily than he’s comfortable with, but he tries not to let it show. “Hey! Leave her the fuck alone.”

“Why, what are you gonna do about it?”

“Hold onto her arm one second longer and you’ll find out, asshole.”

The guy raises his eyebrows at him, disbelievingly, but he lets go. The girl throws a quick glance to Piers, mouthing a silent ‘Thank you’ and hurrying away with trembling legs until she’s out of sight, swallowed up by the mass of people queuing at the bar. 

Piers looks back at Asshole — it’s a fitting name, he’s decided — and glares at him.

“Are you gonna fuck off now?” Asshole demands to know.

Piers merely smirks at him, saying nothing. The truth is that he misses that rush, the adrenaline of a fight. 

But isn’t there someone who’s supposed to be holding him back? Shouldn’t there already be a warning hand pressed onto his chest, keeping him from picking fights like these? There’s always been someone to do that, hasn’t there? 

Well, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. 

“He asked you a question,” Asshole’s friend barges in, shoving Piers’s shoulder.

“What’s going on?” Chris suddenly says as he turns up at Piers’s side, apparently having caught sight of the commotion. 

“Bit meager for backup, isn’t it?” Asshole comments, revealing flawless white teeth as he sneers at Chris. Probably some fucking rich kid who thinks he can get away with anything. 

Without looking back, Piers steps in front of Chris, blocking Asshole’s view. “Touch _a hair_ on his head, and I promise you won’t walk out of here alive.”

A disbelieving scoff. “Fuck, you’re a dramatic one, aren’t ya?”

“See if I’m bluffing,” Piers dares him. He takes a step closer, the lips pressed to a thin line, uncompromising, determined. “Come on. Do me the favor. Punch me. Let’s see if you’re both an asshole _and_ an idiot.”

The guy hauls off, and Piers is glad that, despite being drunk, he’s still faster than him. His reflexes kick right in as he evades Asshole’s punch with one sidestep, and in the end it takes only one blow from his own fist to knock the other guy and one his perfect teeth out and render him unconscious. 

They’re thrown out of the bar — all of them, even Chris, though he didn’t even get the _chance_ to do anything— but Piers thinks that it was worth it. 

Claire and Steve rush out of the bar, wanting to know what the hell happened. Steve actually sounds impressed when Piers tells him. 

“You managed to knock another guy out?” Steve asks, his brow furrowing with doubt. “With one punch? In the state you’re in?”

“Yep.”

“All right, Rocky, how about a ride home now?” Claire offers, stopping next to her car. 

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t wanna go home,” Piers mumbles, scowling.

“I’m gonna deal with this,” Chris says, holding onto Piers’s arm to keep him steady. “I think a bit of fresh air is gonna help sober him up. It’s fine, Claire, we’ll see each other tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay, Chris, see you tomorrow.”

It’s strange, Piers thinks, how a town as big as Raccoon City can be so utterly deserted on a Friday night. It really does look like the ghost town it is, like this. Because yes, it’s probably around 3 AM now, but they barely even pass a car or a pedestrian on their way to— 

“Where are we even going?” Piers asks, though they’ve already been on their way for a couple of minutes now. It’s not like any of these streets are remotely familiar to him anyway. The gray buildings and the light of the street lamps just blur into one another, creating one big ugly mess. 

“Home.”

“But I told you, I don’t want to—”

“I know,” Chris says. “ _My_ home. I can sleep on the couch for one night, it’s fine. And considering you just threatened to _kill_ a guy to protect me, it really seems like the least thing I can do,” he adds, his tone growing teasing. 

“Well, I knew you weren’t gonna do any boulder-punching looking like this,” Piers comments, walking into Chris and nudging him with his shoulder.

“Boulder-punching?” Chris repeats, coming to a stop.

“In a volcano!” Piers yells into the night, imitating the way Claire always makes fun of Chris about this particular detail of the incident in Africa. It has always been a popular rumor in the BSAA, maybe having grown to be somewhat of an urban legend throughout the years. Knowing that the captain wouldn’t reveal anything anyway, the men always turned to Piers, asking if it’s true, and he’s always denied it, every single time.

But he knows it happened. He asked Sheva.

Chris’s lips give a twitch. “Wow, you’re drunk.”

“Maybe.”

Too late Piers realizes that the alcohol not only silenced the pain — it also shut out the part of him that cares, and all that’s left on his mind is fuck it, none of this matters, none of this is real, so just _fuck it—_

Piers feels Chris’s gaze on him as he steps forward, a little wobbly, and curls his fist into the fabric of Chris’s shirt, pulling him closer to him, his other hand rising to cup Chris’s jaw. Piers flicks his tongue over his own lips, while Chris freezes in place and keeps staring at him, silently, as if he’s captivated by the sight. 

He lets his thumb graze over Chris’s bottom lip, feeling it tremble underneath his touch. Feeling triumphant at making someone like Chris shiver with nothing but his touch, Piers smiles and leans up, closing the distance between them, feeling the warmth of Chris’s breath on his face, wondering how those lips are gonna taste— and reaches nothing but air. 

Chris has turned away. 

“You always do that,” Piers says, lightly, as if the rejection doesn’t bother him. 

“Do what?” Chris says, his voice unnaturally high, sounding nothing like himself.

“Keep me from doing anything rash and stupid.”

Chris gives a scoff, and continues walking. “You keep talking like you’ve known me forever. You don’t.”

“Who knows?” Piers muses. The alcohol in his veins makes it easier to keep on joking, to keep on pretending. “Maybe I’m a guardian angel sent down here to protect you.”

“You are lot of things, Piers Nivans. But an angel isn’t one of them.”

“Who’s acting like they knowing everything about the other now, huh?” Piers challenges. “What, are you saying I’m not nice?”

Chris still refuses to look back at him. “It’s not a word I would use to describe you.”

“Then which words would you use?” 

“Big-mouthed, for one,” Chris says. “Arrogant. Erratic at times. A bit of an asshole.”

While that may be the truth, Piers can’t help but feel a sting at hearing it out of Chris’s mouth. “Wow, you really don’t hold back.” 

He can hear Chris exhale, sees him slowly turn to finally face him again. Piers can’t place the expression on Chris’s face. There are too many emotions visible there. “Incredibly brave,” Chris goes on, not even blinking as he holds Piers’s eyes with his own. There’s a strange intensity to his gaze, and the contrast to Chris’s common display of utter calmness and levelheadedness keeps Piers fixed in place, unable to move a muscle. “Caring. Genuinely funny. Loyal, and strong-minded, and honest. Sad.” 

His mouth feels dry as he looks back at Chris. “I’m not sad.”

It’s clear that Chris doesn’t believe him, but he makes no move to contradict Piers. 

 _Am I that easy to read?_ Piers wonders. _Or is it just you who’s so good at it?_

They’re almost in front of the Redfield’s house. Piers recognizes it, because it’s the only thing that’s familiar around here.

“You did a real good thing back there, you know,” Chris says, his voice gaining a gentle quality.

Piers winces. “Don’t say that.”

“But it’s the truth,” Chris persists. “Who knows what those jackasses would have done to that girl, if you hadn’t— Piers. Piers, wait. Don’t walk so fast.”

He really should listen to Chris, but Piers’s sense of reason is gone for the night, and the only thing he is able to see through his clouded mind is the instinct to get away. He stumbles over the curb, hitting the sidewalk before Chris can reach him. 

He lands knee-first, managing to scrape his jeans and tear some of the fabric. Fantastic. “ _Goddammit_.”

“Come on, let’s get you to bed.” Chris helps him up, carrying some of his weight on his shoulder. Getting to the house is easy. The stairs prove much harder. More than once they crash into one another, and Piers swears he can see Chris holding his breath whenever he props himself up against him, trying to get back on his own feet. Once or twice he thinks he even catches Chris staring at his lips. But everything is a foggy blur, distorted and spinning, so he might have just imagined it.  

When they’ve finally arrived in the bedroom, Piers collapses on the bed. Chris helps him to at least put off his shoes, but that’s it, Piers refuses to shed anything else. Too much effort. But on the other hand...

“You wanna stay?” Piers mumbles as Chris leans over him to pull up the covers over his body. His voice comes out low and raspy, and hearing Chris’s sharp intake of breath tells Piers that Chris _likes_ it. 

“I think you’re overestimating my self-control.”

“Oh no, I’m counting on it.”

Unsure why the hell it’s so difficult to get up, Piers forces himself into a sitting position, putting his hand on Chris’s chest. Then, wondering if the stomach is gonna be as chubby and soft as he imagines it to be, just out of curiosity, he lets his hand trail downwards and presses his palm against Chris’s torso. It’s not soft, and definitely not chubby either. He can even sense the hints of a six-pack underneath the thin fabric of Chris’s shirt. “You _do_ work out. Huh. I didn’t believe you did. You’re so _skinny_.”

He can feel Chris’s muscles tense underneath’s his touch, and then Chris’s hand gently, but decidedly drawing Piers’s open palm away from his stomach. He sounds a little out of breath when he tells him, “You’re always so nice to me.”

“I thought we had established that I’m not nice?” Piers teases, smirking. And because his drunken brain apparently thinks he’s not fucked everything up enough already, Piers raises himself up and reaches up, aiming for Chris’s mouth as as quickly as he can.

Apparently not nearly as quickly as he thinks, because Chris evades him, _again_. 

“ _No_ ,” Chris tells him, though it looks like it takes a lot of effort to even say the word. “Not when I can’t be sure you’ll even remember it in the morning.”

Piers pouts at him. “Just one kiss?”

“We both know this isn’t gonna end with just a kiss.”

The look in Chris’s eyes causes something to tug at Piers’s stomach, and God, in that moment he just _wants_. Wants Chris. The regret and eventual not-remembering be damned.

Piers doesn’t understand why this is suddenly so important to him. Then he thinks, of course, this is purely physical. He thinks, all right, maybe he’s been a bit attracted to Chris. Thinks that it really doesn’t matter, thinks that it’s definitely nothing more than that— He doesn’t think, if he’s being honest with himself.

“Goddammit, Piers,” Chris huffs out, so low that Piers isn’t sure he meant for him to hear. 

“Always so responsible,” Piers grumbles. “And bossy. You’re so goddamn bossy.”

“And you’re drunk,” Chris returns, and there’s an unmistakable finality to his tone. “Night, Piers. Get some sleep.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

Piers closes his eyes, feeling unbelievable tired and exhausted. He pulls the covers closer, losing himself in the smell of them, and before he knows it, he’s already begun to drift asleep.

The last thing he feels is the back of a hand gently trace the arch of his cheekbone, but he might already have been dreaming. 

* * *

 When he dreams, he’s stuck in a nightmare — about water, and buzzing electricity, and needles. Chris’s brown eyes staring down at him, his voice strained and chocked, telling him that it’s okay, that he’s gotta hold on, that he’s gotta fight. When he wakes, it’s with tears in his eyes and the ghost of Chris’s touch on his skin. 

“Captain.” Piers’s eyes flutter open, quickly jolting him back to reality. There’s something lying next to him. Something warm. Something that’s most definitely _alive_. Last night— They didn’t... did they? Is his memory lying to him? He’s still got his clothes on, at least.  

Piers sits up upright, feeling a wave of nausea as he does so. Fuck, _his head_.

Throwing a look to his side, slowly, he sees that it’s not a human body at all. No, curled up beside him is a grown German Shepherd. It’s incredibly furry and _huge_ , far huger than it seemed on the pictures on Claire’s Instagram feed — it’s almost taking up the entire half of the bed, occupying more space than Piers, really. The dog’s ears give a twitch, as if he’s heard the rustling of the sheets and Piers’s groggy moan at the pain.

Big, brown eyes stare back at him, but the animal makes no inclination to move, least of all get up. After a while, it simply closes his eyes again, apparently having deemed Piers as unthreatening and not interesting enough to stay awake for. 

Trying to resist the urge to throw up, Piers sits down on the edge of the bed. A large glass of water has been placed on the nightstand, and Piers reaches for it and gulps it all down in one go, suddenly realizing how dry his throat feels. 

The blinds are down, cloaking the room in comfortable darkness, for which Piers is glad. The only light comes from the door, which has been left open just a crack. Carefully, he gets up, crossing the room to take a peek through the open door. 

He’s looking right into Chris’s living room, it seems. While Claire’s apartment is colorful and vibrant, and decorated with all kinds of stuff, it was still evident that it was kept tidy. The coasters under the bottles, the furniture arranged in a way that it’s aesthetically pleasing, with everything being in its place. 

Chris’s part of the house on the other hand is plain, with no posters on the wall, no real system, only simple and basic furniture, nothing fancy. The grandest thing is perhaps the punching bag hanging from the ceiling. There’s the brown leather jacket again, too. But all in all, Piers can’t help but notice how messy and untidy everything is in this room. It’s not dirty — just all over the place. The very few colors in the room clash, the pillows on the couch are all different in size and shape, and there’s a flatscreen tv standing on a very old and frumpy shelf. There’s no order to this. 

Piers lets out a huff of air, actually finding it kind of endearing. 

_Get a hold of yourself. Endearing. Jesus Christ._

He finds Chris in the kitchen, leaning against one of the counters as the sound and smell of brewing coffee fills the small room. There’s a lighter in Chris’s hand, one of those old-school Zippo ones, and he keeps opening and closing it, igniting the flame just to extinguish it again, while his gaze is somewhere entirely different, fixed on nothing in particular. 

“You smoke?”

If Chris is startled by Piers’s sudden appearance in his kitchen, he doesn’t show it. “No, it’s... It belonged to my dad.”

 _Past tense_ , Piers notices. _So that didn’t change either, huh?_ _They’re still dead._

Chris closes the Zippo shut with a _clink_ and shoves it into his jeans pocket. “Breakfast?”

“Coffee.” 

Expecting a cup of regular filter coffee, Piers raises his eyebrows at Chris when the other man hands him a Starbucks cup. 

“What’s—”

“Vanilla Latte,” Chris says, just as Piers takes a sip. It’s not hot, but still warm enough, tasting like liquid heaven.  

“You remembered.” He’s only ever mentioned this once, somewhere in-between his long rant about the atrocity that is coffee without cream. He didn’t think Chris would even pick up on it, least of all remember it.

Chris only gives a nod, and for a long while they just stand there in silence, both of them sipping their coffee. He doesn’t look at Piers. He doesn’t want to look at Piers. 

Piers suddenly feels uncomfortable. Not with Chris, but with himself, which is an altogether foreign notion for him. He realizes this is incredibly vain and stupid, but he becomes almost painfully aware of his hair being dishevelled and all-over-the-place, and the dark circles under his sleep-swollen eyes that are surely telling the story of his hangover all on their own. The wrinkly clothes from yesterday that are still reeking of booze and now of dog. The hole in his jeans. And the fact that he made a hell of a fool of himself last night. 

He figures that he should probably apologize. Even if it hurts his pride, Piers knows it’s the right thing to do. It’s what Chris would do, if the situation were reversed. Not that Chris would ever grope him all night and then try to lure him into his bed, all while not even being able to stand upright. God, it sounds even worse than he remembers. 

“I, uh...” Piers empties his cup of coffee, using the time to quickly gather his thoughts. “I’m sorry. For last night. I may have overestimated my ability to hold my liquor. I don’t drink, usually. I guess it showed.”

“Yeah,” Chris says, and that’s it. He seems calm, but under his collected demeanour Piers can still sense a underlying awkwardness, something Chris tries to conceal from him. 

“At least now I know that I’m a touchy kind of drunk. Still pathetic, really.”

“As opposed to what?”

“An angry drunk.” 

Piers attempts to remain casual, but Chris immediately picks up on his slight change of tone. “Who...?”

“My dad,” Piers says flatly. “Or at least he used to be. So, see. Could be a lot worse. The only real stupid thing I did was trying to kiss you. Twice.”

“I didn’t think you’d remember.” 

_Why won’t you look at me?_

“Some of it’s still a bit foggy,” Piers admits. “It’s not like there _is_ anything to remember, anyway.”

_Did I make you that uncomfortable? Is me wanting to kiss you such a horrifying notion, now that’s it’s daylight and we’re both sober?_

“No, not really.”

_You sound so bitter. You didn’t sound bitter last night._

“I’m sorry.”

_Because I really want to do it again, right now._

“It’s fine.”

_I can see in your eyes that it’s not._

“Okay. Good.”

Silence falls over the room again, and this time it’s even heavier than before, so much that it’s smothering. Chris must feel it too, because he gets up from his place at the counter and begins to vaguely motion to the direction of the living room. “Do you wanna watch a movie or something?”

Piers looks up, letting out the breath he’d been holding. This means Chris wants him to stay. He’s not fucked this up entirely, it seems. “Yeah, all right, sounds good. Just nothing too loud. My head is killing me.”

A hint of a smile dances on Chris’s lips. “Yeah, I figured.”

Piers decides to hit the shower first, partially to just clean himself up, and partially needing some cold water to make him think straight again. 

When he walks into the living room again, Chris is already sitting on the sofa, legs up, one of his hands petting the head of the German Shepherd Piers found in his bed this morning. 

As soon as Piers lets himself sag down on the couch, the dog gives a yelp, coming over to him with its tail waggling, and rests his head on Piers’s thigh, looking up at him with expectant brown eyes. 

“She likes you.”

“Well, we did spent the night together,” Piers jokes, scratching the dog’s head. “What’s her name?”

“Bear.”

Piers lets out an amused snort, letting go of Bear’s fur one second just to have the dog give him a demanding nudge with its head. “I can see the resemblance.”

They skim through Netflix, ending up some indie horror flick, with Bear curled up at the foot of the sofa. The air between them is still charged, so much that Piers swears that he’s able to feel it on his skin. He’s sat down at the other end of the couch, not so far that it’s overly obvious that he’s keeping his distance, but still far enough away from Chris that he won’t barge into his personal space on accident. 

Piers’s back is tensed, his muscles taut. His eyes keep wandering back to Chris at his side, so often that he can’t even focus on the movie. His hand is placed next to his legs, and it’s practically itching to slide over, just a few inches, just to get closer. Goddammit, what the hell is wrong with him?

He flexes his fingers, curling them into a fist, failing to understand how it got this way. They are friends, right? They spent the entire week together, meeting each other for lunch whenever it was possible. Not a day went by without having Chris’s texts on his phone to keep him company, to keep him sane in a world that doesn’t make sense. Yes, they are friends, Piers thinks. And friends aren’t supposed to have to hold onto every remaining inch of their self-control to keep themselves from leaning over and kissing their _friend_ on the mouth. 

The movie progresses, and someone’s dying on screen, and Piers has no idea what happened beforehand or who that character even is. It could be the protagonist, for all he knows. He tries to keep his gaze firmly forward, a million thoughts running through his head. 

Then Piers shifts, just slightly, and happens to briefly brush against Chris’s shoulder, seeing just how _close_ they got without even realizing. Their thighs are practically touching now, and he can feel Chris going absolutely rigid beside him.

He should probably move away, logic and reason are telling him to — but Piers remains stubborn and stays exactly where he is, not even considering giving in. If Chris is uncomfortable he should be the one to move away. It’s as simple as that.

But he doesn’t. 

It takes a while, but he can slowly, but surely feel Chris’s muscles relax against his leg. It gets easier after that, and gradually they regain the ability to be comfortable around each other again, at least comfortable enough to at least to pay some attention to the movie. 

And wow, it’s a terrible movie. Predictable, unlikeable main characters, ridiculous villains. 

Piers guesses the end of the movie 30 minutes before it’s over, and Chris playfully elbows him in the ribs, telling him to shut the hell up, which of course makes Piers want to talk all the more. They laugh, making fun of the people’s acting skills, and after a while the prior awkwardness just disappears. 

They order Chinese takeaway, deciding to spend a lazy Saturday inside on the couch, watching more movies. 

“It’s not like it can get any worse than the one we just watched,” Piers comments once he’s gained power over the remote control. 

“Isn’t that what people usually say just before it gets worse?”

“Shut up.”

He goes for an action movie, and of course it’s even more terrible than the horror flick they watched before. It’s cheesy, and over the top, and _unrealistic_ , and Piers finds himself not minding it one bit. He likes making Chris laugh with his mocking commentary, likes how everything flows so smoothly again, as if nothing ever happened, or _almost_ happened between them.

In the end they decide to screw Netflix and just zap through the Saturday evening program. 

They’re both so tired still, taking turns with yawning, trying to fight to keep their eyes open. When Piers’s head falls down on Chris’s shoulder, Chris doesn’t move away, and Piers makes no effort to move his head and let it rest against anything else, anything that isn’t Chris. 

It’s comfortable like this, with Chris leaning against him. There’s this unfamiliar feeling spreading through him, something that’s got nothing to do with sexual desire or want or need. It’s warm, and safe, and nice — Piers is struggling to find the right word for it. 

Chris is stirless beside him, breathing in and out in an even rhythm, already falling asleep. He’s snoring a bit, and Piers just smiles, shifting his head into an even more comfortable position. 

He hears a content hum right next to his ear, and then Chris drapes his arm over Piers and pulls him closer to him as they sink back into the cushions of the sofa.

They’re completely tangled up in one another, with Piers using Chris as a pillow, and Chris holding Piers in his arms, and Bear curling up somewhere in-between, and the tv still running in the background. It’s not even dark yet.

Home, Piers thinks, finally finding the word right before he falls asleep. It feels like home.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let me do it right for once, for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes you know the story, simply heaven.” — from _Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating this a few days earlier than planned :)

They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about how Piers is spending more time at Chris’s apartment than he does at his own home, nor about the longing looks Piers sometimes directs at Chris, or if Chris even notices them. And most importantly, they don’t talk about that dreadful night ever again. 

The weeks fly by, and Piers is just ending his shift at the café, eagerly waiting until he can finally get the hell out of here. It’s family dinner at the Burton’s tonight — and considering that Piers would have spent the evening at Chris’s anyway, he’s been invited to join them.

Weeks, Piers thinks bitterly, it’s been weeks and he _still_ hasn’t found a single clue about anything that would explain the situation he’s found himself in. He continued doing research, looking for any possible leads, but everything he finds are stories of people who clearly belong in a mental hospital. Piers doesn’t like admitting it to himself, but he probably does, too.

He hates having to accept that there’s simply nothing he can do about it. But in the meantime, he’s got no other choice but stay here and wait for the one missing puzzle piece that finally brings some meaning into this mess.

“Is that the mystery man?”

Piers stops wiping the table and looks over at Hayley, one of his co-workers. She’s a student, barely 20, and _talkative_ beyond measure. 

“What mystery man?” Piers huffs, already having turned his attention back to cleaning the table. He finds it difficult to care about what’s caught her attention this time, especially regarding the fact that Hayley is always interested in _everything_ , bordering on nosy. She’s radiating so much optimism and youth-like excitement, that Piers can’t help but think that she’d fit perfectly in this version of his family. No wonder his mom hired her. She’s practically the younger female version of his dad. 

“ _Your_ mystery man,” Hayley clarifies. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Piers says, trying not to sound too annoyed. “Give me the packet of sugar, I need to fill this up.”

“Have you ever tried using phrases like ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’? I heard those make your requests sound less like commands.” Hayley hurries over to him, _throwing_ the sugar at him. Thank God for his fast reflexes. “And you know exactly who I mean. The one that keeps sending you all those texts. You know, the reason you keep grinning at your phone like you’ve just found out that you won the lottery?”

“Maybe I’m just scrolling through my incredibly funny Twitter feed.”

Hayley gives him a look. “Ha-hah. But seriously, he’s standing right in front of the window. He’s looking at you. Gazing, more like it. Either it’s your lover boy or some kind of freak who wants to raid the café. Doesn’t matter which — _you’re_ going and ask him what he wants.”

Rolling his eyes, Piers sets down the sugar on the table and makes his way to the door. It _is_ Chris. 

“Look at you,” Hayley comments from beside him. “I almost don’t recognize you without the scowl. He really _is_ kind of hot, though. Congrats on your boyfriend.”

“He’s _not_ my boyfriend. Jesus. We’re just friends, that’s all.”

“Not judging by the way he’s looking at you.”

“He’s not looking at me,” Piers says behind gritted teeth, revealing more hidden bitterness than he’s comfortable with.

“Oh hon.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean now?”

Hayley just sighs dramatically, and Piers rolls his eyes again and, finally having arrived at the door, he unlocks it, letting Chris inside. 

Before Piers has the chance to say anything, Hayley has already brushed past him, extending her hand for Chris to shake it. “Hi, I’m Hayley. Piers talks about you all the time.”

“Chris.” Chris’s eyes briefly flicker to Piers, one corner of his lips rising into a half-smile. “He does?”

“Oh, yes. He literally can’t shut up about you and your baby blue eyes.”

“What are you doing here?” Piers directs at Chris, firmly ignoring Hayley. “I thought I was supposed to pick you up at 7?”

“I just wanted to see where you work.”

“And you couldn’t have come during the opening hours?”

“Well, then you would have been busy. Why are you so angry?”

“Because now I don’t have the time to get ready.”

“You don’t have to get ready, you look fine.”

“I am covered with coffee stains.”

“It’s a barbecue, Piers, not a dinner party. Nobody’s going to care.”

“I do.”

“Piers—”

“Are you two going on a date?” Hayley interrupts them, her eyes flickering back and forth between them.

“ _No_ ,” Piers and Chris reply in unison, both with an equal amount of exasperation.

“Wow. Unresolved tension, huh?” Hayley comments with raised eyebrows. Piers wishes there wouldn’t be so much obvious amusement visible on her face. He’s gonna have to listen to her nagging for weeks. “I merely wanted to say that if you want to get out of here early, Piers, I really wouldn’t mind cleaning this place up on my own for once.”

“Thanks,” Piers huffs out, already taking his apron off.

“See, you _are_ still able to learn.”

“Well, don’t get used to it.”

She actually has the audacity to _wink_ at him. “Have fun with your husband.”

Piers glares daggers at her all the way out of the café.

They take Piers’s Camaro to drive to Barry’s house, since Claire and Steve insisted on taking the motorbike, and Chris doesn’t even own a car. It’s an hour long drive, and every time Piers so much as glances in the rear mirror, he catches sight of yet another splash of coffee on his chin. He keeps one hand on the steering wheel, using the other rub the dirt off his face.

It isn’t so much that his self-esteem can’t handle looking a bit messy once in a while. It’s more that he can’t help but think about the fact that — technically — this is Barry’s first time meeting Piers. And now, without having his outstanding skills as a marksman and his rank in the BSAA to support him, Piers has to rely on his appearance alone. And it’s not like his charming personality is gonna be of much help. He has a habit of pissing off people he’s just met. 

And isn’t Burton practically like a father to Chris? Shouldn’t you make a good first impression when you’re meeting your... your friend’s father for the first time? How’s it gonna look with him looking like he’s just crawled out of a dumpster?

When his eyes briefly flicker over to his right, he catches Chris staring at him.

“What?” Piers barks. 

Chris smirks at him, unmoved by Piers’s temper. “So you love my baby blue eyes, huh?”

 _I do_ , Piers thinks, surprising himself. As far as eye colors go, he’s always preferred brown. There’s something inexplicably comforting and honest about the color. And attractive too. And then, remembering whom exactly the brown eyes he just pictured belong to, Piers tenses up, clenching his fingers around the steering wheel. 

A hand reaches out, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly. “Hey, relax. I was kidding.”

“I know,” Piers says, shaking his head at himself. “Sorry. It’s been a bit hectic at the café today.”

He’s never imagined it being so hard. He can handle stress. He can handle having a thousand things on his mind all at once, and he can handle adapting to a job he’s never done before. But being treated like the last scum on earth while being forced to maintain his composure and a polite smile at all times? Now, that’s _hard_. 

“Your co-worker seems... nice.”

Piers snorts. “She’s a menace.”

She’s actually capable of being really nice when she wants to. More than once she helped him deal with particularly difficult customers, or saved a cake Piers ruined with the inexperience he tried to hide. But there’s no way he’s gonna admit _that_ out loud, not after the mortifying scene she’s caused today. 

Piers reaches for the radio, turning down the volume a bit. “What about you? How was your day?”

It’s almost disgustingly domestic. Them, talking about the day they’ve had, driving to a family dinner together, the hair tousled by the wind that’s coming through the open windows, Chris turning up the volume again in-between their conversation, as if he just _knows_ which songs Piers likes. 

“My boss is coming tonight too, actually,” Chris mentions casually. 

Great, more people to impress. “Is he a friend of Barry’s, or something?”

“Yeah,” Chris says. “It was Barry who called in some favors and helped me get a job when I moved back home.”

It happens so fast. So fast that Piers doesn’t see it coming, not until it’s too late. The jeep in front of him is dirty, covered with mud and God knows what else, hiding the turn signal and the stop lights, successfully concealing the subsiding speed of the vehicle.

And then it’s right there in front of them, and there’s no way to go around it, not with the oncoming traffic on the other lane. Piers hits the brake with full force, holding onto the wheel with both hands to keep it steady. He can hear the tires screech, feeling the ABS set in. Luckily, the jeep is fast enough that Piers manages to get in-between it and the other cars, just by a few inches.

Beside him, Chris is panicking, mumbling something unintelligible and panting so fast and heavily that Piers slowly guides the car to the side of the road, letting it come to a halt once it’s safely parked right next to a field, away from any traffic. 

Chris stumbles out of the car, not even shutting the door behind him. Piers curses under his breath and follows him.

“Chris,” Piers tries, approaching the cowering creature that’s kneeling on the ground with careful steps. He doesn’t even look like Chris anymore, like this. Piers feels a sting in his chest, being awfully reminded of China, that moment the captain broke down in front of him at the sight of the burning cocoons. He felt so helpless then. So useless. 

Now, Piers lets himself sink down to the ground and puts a hand on Chris’s shoulder, rubbing it soothingly. “Chris, look at me. Hey, look at me.”

Slowly, Chris turns his head, and Piers swallows. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen so much fear in Chris’s eyes. He’s as white as a sheet, staring at Piers like he doesn’t even recognize him. He’s still breathing heavily, and then a sob he can’t manage to repress rocks through his body, and Piers reaches out to him, taking his face in both of his hands, letting his thumb run over Chris’s cheek.

“You’re safe, all right? I’m here, I got you. You’re safe.” He repeats it, muttering it like a prayer, one of his hands wandering to the side of Chris’s head to pull him closer. Chris just sags into his arms, defenseless, as if he weighed nothing at all. 

“I got you,” Piers says again as he moves to wrap his arms around Chris’s body, holding him close as if to shield him from the outside world, though he knows that this isn’t something you can fight, not with your fists, not physically.

He keeps brushing through Chris’s hair in a steady, calming motion until Chris’s breathing calms down again, and his franticness ebbs away. 

Once he feels Chris’s muscles lose some of their tenseness, Piers pulls away again, just so much that he is able to take a good look at Chris’s face. “You with me?” 

Chris nods, slowly regaining color in his cheeks. Relief washes over Piers, but then he sees something else flash across Chris’s features. Realization. “You know.”

It’s clear what he’s referring to. Piers sees no point in pretending. “Yeah, I know.”

Chris presses his lips together, nodding again, this time in defeat, and Piers finally lets go off his face.

“I’m not stupid, Chris. Even if the accident hadn’t been in the paper, I still would have known that something’s wrong. Do you think I didn’t notice that you don’t drive on your own, that you let Claire drive you around to places that are too far away to reach with your bike? That you never mentioned why exactly you left Tall Oaks so abruptly? That there’s something eating away at you, do you really think I don’t see that?”

“You never said. All this time, you never said.”

“I figured it’s not something you wanna talk about,” Piers says simply.

“And you still—” Chris stops, as if struggling to find the right words. He shakes his head, looking down at the ground. “Even though you knew. Even though you knew that I killed them.”

“It’s not your fault,” Piers says, resolute. “It was an accident. That’s nobody’s fault. They just happen. They happen, and you move on.”

“You don’t know that,” Chris insists. “You weren’t there. Even I don’t know what happened, what I did. I just know they’re dead because of me.”

“This is bullshit,” Piers says, giving a scoff. “I could have killed you, right now, if you go by that logic.”

“That’s not the same—”

“Yes, it is! It’s exactly the same. If I hadn’t stepped on the brake in time, if that jeep had been just a little slower, if _anything_ else had gone wrong, then one of us could be dead right now. Me, you. Both of us. That’s in the past now. We’re still here. You don’t always get a second chance. And when you do, you don’t wallow in self-pity and let that fear consume you. You move on. You don’t waste it. You don’t fucking waste it. It’s not fair to them.”

 _Always carrying the weight of the goddamn world on your shoulders_ , Piers wants to shout. _Even now._

Piers scrambles to his feet, trembling with anger he doesn’t know what or whom it’s directed at. He swallows it down, forcing himself to compose himself again, and turns to Chris, stretching out his hand and helping him up. “Come on, let’s go.”

It’s a silent, uneventful car ride after that. Chris remains quiet the entire time, staring down at his hands, and Piers can practically _hear_ him thinking beside him. He lets out an inaudible sigh, letting his head sink back into the headrest of his seat. Not for the first time in his life, he wishes he was softer. In the field, his uncompromising imperturbability always helped him get along, helped him make hard decisions, and helped him get through even the worst of times.

But with human contact? With relationships? The most important person in his life is sitting next to him, suffering in silence, and there’s not a thing Piers can do, except yell at him and make it even worse. Fucking good job. 

They arrive at the Burton’s house after what feels like an eternity. Piers parks his car somewhere at the edge of the lot and turns off the motor. And then it’s completely silent, and Piers just can’t bear it anymore.

“Are you okay?” he asks, staring straight ahead, knowing it’s the stupidest thing he could have come up with. Of course Chris is not okay. He’s far from okay.

“You are right,” Chris says after a long moment. 

Piers spins his head round, feeling his mouth fall open with surprise. 

“This... living in the past — it doesn’t change anything,” Chris says quietly. “And it’s not fair to them.”

Piers exhales, trying not to let his emotions get the better of him. “I know it’s not that easy. Believe me, I know.”

Chris’s brow furrows, just for a second, the movement subtle and barely visible, but Piers sees it. He looks away, hiding his face from Chris, closing himself off. His grief doesn’t matter, not right now. 

“I just... I just don’t want you to— I hate seeing you—” He gives a quiet groan, shaking his head at himself, infuriated by this inability to articulate what he’s feeling right now. “You’re stronger than this,” he finally says, his voice laced with frustration. “Chris, you’re the strongest person I know.”

It’s quiet for a long time, and Piers frowns, still unwilling to look at Chris. “We should probably go. They’re gonna wonder what’s taking us so long.”

“Piers.”

Piers stops, his fingers already curled around the door handle. 

“You need to understand that this isn’t some switch I can just turn off again,” Chris says. “Guilt doesn’t simply disappear, just because I want it to. It’s something I have to learn to live with. It takes time.”

“I know,” Piers says. “And that’s all I’m asking.”

* * *

Once they arrive at the house, it’s like they enter a different world. They’re greeted by children laughter, in Polly’s case, and annoyed teenage nagging, coming from Moira. They can’t be much older than 5 and 12, Piers guesses. Barry and his wife Kathy are there, too, and Piers takes a deep breath to prepare himself. 

Chris introduces them, and the second he’s finished, Polly runs over to him, throwing curious looks at the stranger that’s just walked into the house. 

“What’s that big brown spot on your neck?” Polly says, pointing at it with one smudgy finger. “Daddy, is that poop?” 

That goddamn chocolate cake. Fuck, he knew he was gonna make a fool of himself. Piers briefly considers the odds of a black hole opening up underneath him at this very moment to swallow him whole. He looks up at Barry, seeing the other man grinning at him, a bit too gleefully, as if he’s able to read Piers’s mind. 

Polly, apparently impatient at not getting an immediate answer, hurries over to Piers, staring up at him with big eyes.  

“It’s chocolate cake,” Piers explains to her, crouching down until he’s at her eye-level. “Way more delicious and less smelly.”

Polly’s eyes flicker up to her mom, and when they shoot back to Piers, they’re filled with apprehension. She leans closer to him, her voice low and hushed as if she’s about to tell him a big secret. “My mom says we’re not allowed to eat chocolate before dinner.”

“Are you gonna tell on me?” Piers whispers back.

Polly shakes her head, vehemently pressing her lips together. He can see her eyes moving back to the spot of chocolate on his neck, and then her hand shoots up, way quicker than he’s expected from a 5 year old. 

“No, don’t try to eat that, that’s gross,” Piers says, laughing as he evades Polly’s hand. “We can bake some fresh cake, though. You and me. Brownies, maybe. How’s that sound?”

Polly’s eyes light up at the mere mention of brownies, and she flashes a grin at him, already turning her back to storm into what must be the Burton’s kitchen. 

“But we don’t have any—” Barry starts, worried eyes following his daughter’s excited steps. 

“We don’t need a lot,” Piers appeases him, getting upright again. “Making brownies is easy, I’ve been literally doing it all day. Flour, sugar, cocoa powder. Some eggs. Butter. That’s it. We can eat them for dessert, or something.”

“That’s actually a great idea,” Kathy says. “I’ll see if I can find some powdered sugar to sprinkle on them later.”

“Pierssss!” resounds from the kitchen. 

“I’ll be right there!” he calls back.

With Barry and Kathy off to scramble together the ingredients, Chris and Piers are alone again. 

Chris is wearing a smile, _the_ smile. Piers’s favorite smile. It never felt so good to see it as it does now. 

“Sounds like you’re gonna be occupied for a good long while.”

“Why, are you offering to help?” 

“No, you can trust Claire to keep me busy.” Chris’s hand reaches out, wiping away the patch of chocolate dough with his thumb. “You’re now officially in charge of making dessert.”

“You totally saw that stain when we were still in the café, didn’t you?” 

Chris bites down on his lip, looking like he’s trying not to laugh. “Have fun.”

The baking session turns out as chaotic as one would expect. The room has been reduced to a dirty mess, and, eyeing the few splatters of dough on the wall, Piers is already swallowing with dread at Kathy’s reaction once she lays on the state of her kitchen.

“Need any help cleaning this up? Or with repapering the wall?”

Claire’s standing in the doorframe, taking in the aftermath with an amused glint in her eyes. 

“Aunt Claire!” Polly yells, bolting off right into Claire’s arms. 

“Wow, you got so big!” Claire says as she lifts Polly up. “Is that a new ribbon you got? Very pretty.”

“No, it’s fine,” Piers says, waving off. “I think you better get Polly cleaned up, though. We had an... incident with the mixer.”

“An incident, huh?”

“Apparently it’s very fascinating to watch what happens when you take the mixer out of the bowl _before_ turning it off,” Piers comments dryly, directing a teasing smile at Polly.

“Chocolate rain!”

“Chocolate rain. Got it.” Claire puts Polly down on the ground again, taking her by the hand to get her ready for dinner.

Piers himself also didn’t come out of the battle unscathed, though he thinks this time he’s managed to get rid of all the chocolate stains on his face and neck. He almost laughs when he realizes that he just compared something as mundane as baking a cake with a _battle_. Amazing what a few weeks without any real danger can do. 

Once Piers is done with putting the brownies in the oven and cleaning up the kitchen as well as he manages, he turns around just in time to see Chris enter the room, in his hands a tray filled with various vegetables and lettuce. 

Piers lifts an eyebrow. “You’re gonna cook?”

“You don’t have to look so horrified.”

“I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Well, how would you?” Chris sets the tray down on the counter, searches for a knife, and starts chopping. It feels strange, seeing Chris handle such a large knife for anything different than killing BOWs. Like a dog walking on two legs. “No, I’ve just been tasked with preparing some stuff for the salad. Nothing much you can do wrong with that. Why, wanna help?” he adds, mimicking Piers’s words from earlier.

Unfazed, Piers simply smirks at him. “No, I’m good.”

Chris releases an exasperated scoff and shakes his head, unable to hide the smile that’s creeping onto his features. 

Piers keeps the game up for a while, leaning against one of the counters with crossed arms, just watching Chris work. It takes some muttered curses on Chris’s and once glance from Piers at the diced (more like mashed) tomatoes for him to give in and come to Chris’s aid.

“What? They’re chopped!” Chris calls out, indignantly. “It shouldn’t matter how you chop them, they’re still gonna taste the same.”

“Not when you’re intending to eat them with sliced mozzarella,” Piers returns, quickly carrying the rest of the tomatoes to safety. “God, how the hell do you even survive on your own?”

“I got you now, don’t I?”

They work well together, just like they do in the field. They don’t get into one another’s workspace, coordinate themselves without needing to communicate, and divide the work in such a way that it’s fast and efficient. It just fits.

When Piers suddenly hears Chris snivel, he rushes over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder, suddenly afraid he might be having another flashback like earlier. 

“Chris?”

Another sniff. “Goddamn onions.”

Piers lets out an relieved breath. “You know, I once heard that if you wear goggles, you don’t have to cry while cutting onions.”

“Sounds practical.” Chris turns around, facing him. He looks like a mess, with tears running down his cheeks and puffy eyes and all. “And not ridiculous _at all_.”

“Nah, what gives you that idea?” Piers smiles, moving his hand from Chris’s shoulder to his face, wiping the tears away with his thumb.

He doesn’t let go, keeps his palm resting against Chris’s cheek, feels Chris looking at him, stunned at first, then leaning into the touch, while Piers keeps cradling his head, carefully, gently, as if it’s the most precious thing he’s ever touched. 

Another image finds its way back into his mind in that moment. A memory of Chris looking at him through the window of the escape pod, tears welling up in his eyes, wrapped up in denial, breathing one single word, as if he still refuses to accept it. 

The tiredness in his shoulders. So lost, so haunted. _I can’t let this war follow me forever._ Provoking Jake, the recklessness, the suicidal tendencies — not actively wishing to die, but more like crossing the street without looking. _I don’t know, maybe it’s fate._

 _I never meant to add to your grief_ , Piers thinks, and when he leans in, he closes his eyes, picturing brown eyes, battle-hardened, filled with the remnants of years full of grief and loss, but unwavering, and strong, and gentle, and kind. 

Piers brushes his closed lips against Chris’s, chastely almost. Just to have done it, just this once.

He pulls away again, letting his forehead rest against Chris’s, the hand still placed on his cheek, brushing over it with his thumb, over and over again, while his own eyes remain closed.

For a long moment all he hears are Chris’s uneven breaths, and God, he’s still so close. Piers is the one holding him, Piers is the one that’s supposed to let go now. Then he flicks his tongue over his lips, opens his eyes, sees Chris staring at him, once again with that captivated look on his face, and that’s all it takes to realize that he wants more of this. More than just physical closeness. There’s something different there, making his heart flutter and overwhelm his body and mind with a foreign, but pleasant kind of warmth.

Maybe he did want this. Before. Maybe Chris did look at him like that. Maybe Piers just didn’t pay attention. To Chris, to himself. It’s all a big cluster of memories. 

_You don’t always get a second chance._

_And when you do, you don’t fucking waste it._

Piers darts forwards at the same time Chris decides to take the initiative, and their lips meet halfway. They don’t lose the tenderness of their first kiss, but now there’s some desperation mingled in there too, a sense of urgency that seems to be rooted in the wish to make up for lost time, for lost opportunities, more so for Piers than for Chris. He feels like he’s releasing emotions he’s been keeping bottled up for _years_. 

He likes the way Chris’s legs part for him, just so much that Piers can fight right between them. The way Chris pushes him back with the mere force of his lips, and at the same time pulls him closer with the two hands placed on Piers’s hips — it’s a contradiction in itself, and Piers loves it, this measurement of their strength and willpower. Both of them unwilling to give in, though they both want the exact same thing: more. 

Piers lets his hands wander, touching every part of Chris’s body he can reach, taking his time as he lets his fingers trail down Chris’s spine, slowly, deliberately, lingering when he reaches his backside, barely able to suppress a triumphant smirk when he succeeds in making Chris groan against his mouth. Piers sees an opportunity, seizing this weak moment to lift Chris onto the counter, grinning at how little he weighs in contrast, and how easy it is. 

Chris fights right back, licking his way into Piers’s mouth, and fuck, he’d be lying if he said his jeans don’t feel a little too tight right now. 

“You have a bit of dough on your neck,” Chris mumbles, pressing a kiss against the side of Piers’s mouth. 

“Oh, now you’re telling me?” Piers rasps, feeling every last breath squeezed out of his lungs as Chris keeps planting kisses on his chin, and his cheek...

“Mhm. Right there.” And then he starts sucking on the sensitive skin on Piers’s neck, apparently not even caring if he’s leaving a mark. In this very moment, neither does Piers. Let him do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn’t _stop_. 

The hands placed on his hips move under the hem of his shirt, the palms pressing against his skin, pulling closer, so close that they’re practically rubbing against each other with every movement they make, wrapped up in a tight embrace.

“Chris,” Piers grunts out, warningly. 

He curls his fist into Chris’s hair, unable to keep his hips from rocking forward when Chris ceases sucking for a moment and starts using his tongue on him instead. Oh God, _fuck_. For a second the friction seems to much to bear, forcing Piers to press his mouth against the side of Chris’s face and stifle the moan that’s threatening to leave his throat. He could come like this, he thinks, kind of feeling like a teenager again with no inch of self-control, all while desperately wishing they were home, and not in somebody else’s kitchen. 

The vegetables and everything else are forgotten, and indistinctly a strange, strong smell starts filling Piers’s nose, but he doesn’t care. His mind and body are occupied. Everything else can wait. 

It’s only when the door bursts open, and a very frantic Claire enters the room, that Piers stops and finally realizes what the hell is smelling so weird.

“Shit!”

“What in God’s name are you doing in here that you didn’t hear the timer _or_ the fire alarm?” Claire says, not sparing them a glance as she rushes to the oven and hastily pulls out the sheet of the very dark brownies. 

Piers instantly lets go of Chris, still feeling very much hard, and turns away, trying to find a way to conceal the bulge in his pants. He pinches himself in the arm, hoping the pain will distract him. Next to him, Chris quickly slides off the counter, patting over his shirt in an attempt to smoothen the telling wrinkles. 

Claire lets out a whiff of air, and turns around to face them. “Seriously, what have you been— Oh.”

Piers still has his back to her, keeping his front as hidden as possible, not daring to turn. _Think about something disgusting. Think about clowns. There’s nothing weirder than clowns._

_Clowns, clowns, clowns._

“What’s wrong with Uncle Chris’s hair?” Polly’s curious voice echoes from the direction of the door. 

Oh Jesus, why not have the entire family come into the room and witness this? 

“Leaving you two alone in a room together when you’re supposed to be working — check. Not a mistake I’ll make again.” Claire goes over to Polly, putting two hands on her shoulder to guide her out of the room. “The barbecue’s almost ready, by the way. I’d try to make myself look at least a bit presentable, If I were you. At least if you don’t wanna have Barry laugh at you and tell this story to people for the next twenty years.”

The door closes behind them, and Piers finally dares to let out the breath he’d been holding. Great, now that he completely blew _that_ , he just needs to survive the actual dinner now.

* * *

Piers thinks he’s actually doing a pretty good job until now. They’re sitting at the table in acceptable distance to each other — the wrinkles have been smoothened, the hair put back to its original state, the flush and everything else has finally toned down.

Yep, everything’s going great. He’s got this completely under control. There’s no _way_ any unwelcoming surprises are going to throw him off now. 

“Apologies for being late,” a voice Piers doesn’t recognize resounds from other side of the room. “Traffic on a Friday evening is a nuisance in this town.”

“Glad you could make it, Albert.”

Albert? The name peaks Piers’s interest, and he turns his head, taking a good long look at the man who’s just entered the room. Peroxide blond hair, the fact that he’s wearing sunglasses inside like a common douchebag, and the undeniably smug expression on his face leave no doubt about it. It’s the legendary Wesker. Albert fucking Wesker himself. 

“Traffic is a bitch on every evening in this town,” follows a mutter, coming from a voice Piers _does_ recognize, and God, now he can see the resemblance, plain as day. The way these two hold themselves basically screams _‘Hello, I’m a pest to this earth and I know it, watcha gonna do about it?’_ and Piers feels the anger surging through his gut just by _looking_ at them. 

“Jake, language.”

He can’t believe this. The Wesker family, here, together, _alive_ , in this room, attending a goddamn barbecue. The mentally deranged psychopath and the presumptuous pain-in-the-ass teenager, his son. It’s like he’s just stepped into a satiric comedy of his own life. 

Piers doesn’t even notice his fingers wrapping around the handle of his knife, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles turn white and his muscles are trembling, not until Chris puts his hand over Piers’s own. Slowly, Piers loosens his grip and puts the knife back down on the table. Chris throws him a concerned look, but he doesn’t say anything, simply intertwines his fingers with Piers, squeezing them once, reassuringly, soothingly, and Piers instantly begins to relax again. 

It feels strange, having this overt display of affection, being the receiver of it. It’s not something he’s used to. Hell, he can’t remember the last time he held hands with someone, the last time he let someone in like this. The last time he had something with someone that went beyond the physical. 

He keeps his eye on the Weskers, wary still. Jake catches him staring and squints at him, wearing the most brooding expression he’s probably able to muster. A prime example of a moping teenager. Once again, it’s mutual dislike at first sight. 

Jake’s 15, or 16, tops. He’s not gonna pick a fight with a child, Piers tells himself. He’s not that petty. Though, if that bastard keeps gawking at him like that any longer, he just might. 

Piers raises his eyebrows at him, silently asking him what the goddamn problem is. He thinks the message comes through, because Jake scowls — for a second Piers thinks he might actually stick his tongue out, the brat — and then turns away, crossing his arms over his chest in the most sulking manner possible. Piers feels a bit more triumphant than he probably should.

“Piers?”

“Yes, Polly?”

“Are you Uncle Chris’s boyfriend?” Polly wants to know, speaking so loudly and excitedly that every single conversation at the table comes to an abrupt stop, and in a matter of seconds every head has turned around to gape at Piers. 

How about that black hole again?

“Claire said that’s why he ruffled your hair. Because he likes you.” Polly goes on, proud of the fact that she apparently knows something the others don’t. “And when we came into the kitchen, you were—”

“Yes,” Chris interrupts her. His eyes flicker briefly to Piers, as if he’s not quite sure. “Yes, Polly, Piers is my boyfriend.”

“So you’re the one who gave him the hickey?”

“Jake.” Wesker shoots his son a look that has daggers in it, and in that moment Piers has no problem at all to picture the guy sporting red eyes. 

“Must have been an exciting kind of hair ruffling the two of you did in there...”

Piers is gonna kill him. Teenager or not, he’s gonna _kill_ him. 

“Well, congratulations you two,” Barry says awkwardly, though sincerely. “So, uh— Claire, when’s the big trip?”

“Sometime at the end of the September,” Claire replies, smiling at Barry’s not-so-smooth attempt at changing the topic. She turns to Steve at her side, giving him a nudge. “When’s the date again? I keep forgetting.”

“22nd.”

“Right, we’ll leave on September 22nd. We heard Hawaii’s nice that time of year.” She looks over to Steve again, giving a laugh, as if they just shared an inside joke only the two of them understand. 

After that, it’s a quiet, uneventful dinner. Despite their obvious shadiness and Jake’s utter lack of manners, the Weskers are actually quite ordinary, Piers is forced to begrudgingly admit. 

Once it’s over and the washing up has been done, Piers excuses himself, just needing a bit of quietude for a while. 

He sits down on the steps of the front porch, taking in the fresh evening air. 

A few minutes later, Piers hears footsteps on the porch, closing in on him, then, Chris’s voice. “Mind if I join you? Or did you want to be alone?”

Piers turns his head, looking up at Chris. “No, it’s fine. Just having a bit of a headache.”

“Yeah, we’re not exactly a quiet bunch.”

“No,” Piers agrees, forming a smile. 

Chris sits down to his left, so close that they’re thighs are pressing against each other, and it takes Piers a moment to adjust, to remember that this is what they are now. No denial, no suppressing, no secret, longing looks. It’s all in the open now. 

“What was that about earlier?” Chris asks. “With Wesker?”

Piers gives a quiet scoff. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

He draws a deep breath, closing his eyes for a brief moment before he finally turns his head to look at Chris. There must be something visible in his eyes, because Chris puts his hand on Piers’s forearm, brushing his thumb up and down. It’s so effortless, so natural — and for a second Piers wonders what it would be like to go back, to a reality where this never had the chance to happen, to where Chris is his captain and nothing more. 

“You ever feel like this isn’t your first time living this life?” Piers says eventually, hoping it doesn’t come out as crazy as it sounds.

“You mean like reincarnation?”

“Yeah.”

Chris doesn’t laugh or brush it off, as Piers has feared. Instead, his expression remains serious as he asks, “Who do you think you were?”

“Someone who made a difference,” Piers replies, unsuccessful at keeping the ever-present bitterness from seeping through. 

“And what makes you think you aren’t doing that now?”

“I’m not doing anything important,” Piers says, louder and with more frustration than he means to. “I’m not changing the future, I’m not saving lives.”

“Hey, you don’t know that,” Chris insists. “You might be there at the right time, the right place. Doesn’t take world-changing gestures to make a difference.”

“Never took you for the philosophical type.”

“I’m not. But I’m not cynical either. We all have a part to play, and none of it is unimportant. I believe that.... I’ve gotta believe that.”

Piers looks away, replaying Chris’s words in his head, letting the meaning of them sink in, the logic of them.  

When you’ve caused such a horrific thing, caused so much pain even if you didn’t mean to — isn’t that the one thought that keeps you from giving in to self-hatred? That one thought that keeps you sane? The thought that, despite all the bad stuff, you brought some good into the world as well? Wasn’t that what was going through his own head when he slammed the enhanced strain of the C-Virus into his arm? He created a monster in that moment; a monster that’s unpredictable, the actions of which he could have lost control of in any second, with consequences he couldn’t have anticipated. 

The greatest risk he’s ever taken. All of it to save Chris. And wasn’t it worth it?

“Who was it?” Chris jerks him out of his thoughts, caressing his arm again.

“Hm?” 

“The one who’s responsible for that look on your face.” His voice grows softer as he adds, “Who’d you lose?”

_You._

“No one,” Piers says quietly, and as soon as the words have left his mouth, Chris presses his lips together and nods. There’s a little bit of hurt visible on his face, but mostly there’s understanding. Piers knows Chris isn’t gonna pressure him into talking about it, but he doesn’t change the topic either. He stays quiet, giving Piers enough time to change his mind if he wishes to.

_I’m like an open book to you, aren’t I?_

“I didn’t _lose_ anyone. I left someone,” Piers clarifies eventually, and he can’t help but think about how _weird_ it feels to talk to Chris about _Chris._ Absolute mindfuck. “My... my partner.”

“And it’s not something that you wanted?”

“It’s something I _had to_ do,” Piers says, a little defensively. Nothing about shoving Chris into that escape pod was easy. It felt like ripping apart his arm all over again. “I had no choice. It was better that way, for both of us. Even if _he_ didn’t see it that way. He—” He halts for a second, feeling the beginning of a smile finding its way onto his lips. “He can be very stubborn.”

“Where’s he now?” Chris asks, keeping his tone carefully neutral. Piers would by lying if he said he didn’t detect the faintest hint of jealousy in those low spoken words. How ridiculous, he thinks. To be jealous of yourself. 

“I don’t know,” Piers says. “Hopefully off in the world somewhere, doing what he does best.”

 _And God forbid if he fucking retired after all._ Anger fills his gut at the mere thought, before he suddenly realizes that it doesn’t matter — he won’t ever find out, and he won’t be able to change a single thing about it. That’s simply not in his power anymore. The captain is out of reach for him, forever probably. As it should be. 

It’s quiet for a long moment, and Piers just lets go, forcing the image of _Chris_ away, and lets his head sag back against the curve of Chris’s neck. Taking his own advice and trying to live in the present. 

The world has already been swallowed up by darkness, with only the distant lights of the city providing any form of illumination at the horizon. Piers’s field of vision is limited, far more than he’s usually comfortable with — he can’t even see beyond the outlines of the yard. It’s almost like the world ends here, like this it, this is all there is. It’s this feeling of quietude and loneliness that gets to him. That feeling that everything is possible.

The chirping of crickets provide a constant background noise, mingled with the occasional burst of laughter echoing from inside, and everything, the softness of this place and Chris leaning against him, it’s peaceful, and safe, and beautiful.

How amazing it is, really, to be alive. He never thought about it before, never appreciated it. It’s not like he took it for granted — he didn’t. But doing what he does, what the BSAA does, _did_ , seeing so much bloodshed and death and madness... It’s hard to remember that the world can beautiful as well as terrible. 

When he tells Chris, he doesn’t say _‘You wait tables. What do you know of the world’s horrors?’_ , but instead Piers can feel him nodding, uttering a calm “I know” into his ear. 

 _Do you?_ Piers wonders. _Does this version of you really know?_ Then he remembers the accident, remembers that Chris lost so many of his friends on one day, remembers that Chris and Claire’s parents are dead.

Maybe this reality isn’t so different after all. Just because it’s a different kind of pain, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt just the same. 

Maybe— maybe this really is a second chance, Piers thinks as he shifts his head and reaches up to brush his lips against Chris’s. And he’s gonna make the best of it.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany, in gold light, as the camera pans to where the action is, lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see the blue rings of my eyes as I say something ugly. I never liked that ending either." — from _Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_

Wake up.

_“—there’s still time!”_

_“—once we get out of here—”_

_“I need you to—”_

_“—all that’s gonna change.”_

Wake up!

_“—just stay with me.”_

_“You’re gonna be okay!”_

_“—didn’t say.”_

Wake up—

The sound of water, a strange, steady rhythm to it, something closing around his arm, his hand, his _left_ hand, pressing and squeezing, so hard that it hurts, wake up, and he tries to fight back, but the echoes of the water grow louder, rushing in his ears, wake up, _wake up—_

Piers gasps, finding his lungs feeling as if they’ve been deprived of all oxygen. For a moment, he doesn’t know where he is, when he is, who he is. It’s dark, the room filled with the sound of the steady dripping of raindrops against the window. The arms around him pull him in tighter, and then a head is nuzzled against his shoulder, followed by a soft kiss pressed on the skin there. Chris.

“How come you’re already awake?” Piers mumbles into the pillow. He still feels a bit breathless, and the sound of rain makes his muscles taut — still, after all this time. He turns around, as best as he can with Chris’s ironclad grip around his torso. 

“Don’t know,” Chris says, now directly facing him. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Yeah, the rain is so goddamn loud,” Piers grumbles back. The hammering against the window suddenly turns even louder and undoubtedly more violent, and he lets out a groan. “Are you kidding me? Has it seriously just started _hailing_? Great.”

It’s too dark to see much, but his eyes have adjusted enough to the lack of light to decipher the outlines of Chris’s features. He’s smiling. 

“Quit smiling,” Piers orders, lightly shoving his shoulder with the hand he just wriggled free. “I’m serious.”

“You’re grumpy,” Chris corrects him, still wearing that goddamn smile. “Honestly, Piers, is there anything in this world you _haven’t_ yet complained about?”

“Mhm, there are a few things I would never, ever dare to complain about.”

“Oh yeah? What _things_ do you have in mind?”

As an answer, Piers surges forward, capturing Chris’s bottom lip between his own. Chris leans into the kiss, but the sappy smile stubbornly remains on his features, making the whole kissing thing a bit difficult to manage. Well, Piers thinks, it’s not like his mouth is the only kissable part of Chris’s body.

Starting at Chris’s jaw, Piers continues moving downwards, using both of his hands to push Chris onto his back. He likes the sounds Chris produces underneath his touch — as if he has absolutely no control over them any longer. 

Then Piers pulls away again, stopping his exploration just before reaching the spot he knows Chris wants him to touch the most, and almost laughing when Chris groans at him.

“Who’s complaining now, huh?”

“Why the hell did you stop?”

Piers moves up, resting his bodyweight on top of Chris’s body, and takes his face into his hands to press a kiss against his lips. “ _Because_ — if you do come this morning, I want to it be inside of me,” he says, looking Chris right into the eyes. 

Chris as good as flushes at Piers’s bluntness, but his eyes grow dark, flickering down to Piers’s lips as he licks over his own. His voice comes out low and raspy when he asks, “You sure?”

Piers gives a nod, lowering his head to kiss him again. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Chris kisses him back, long and languidly, without any rush, before he abruptly stops and presses a flat palm against Piers’s chest, pushing Piers onto his back to climb on top of him. He’s completely pinned down, unable to move, breathless as he watches Chris with a sudden fascination. It’s things like these, these displays of raw physicalness, where Piers can’t help but think of the other _Chris_.

Just for a second that moment in the hallway in China flares up in his mind, of Chris shoving him against the wall, and just like that Piers feels his muscles clench and the heat rushing to his groin, glad when Chris finally leans over him to grab the condoms and lube from the bedside drawer. Chris’s movements are knowing and determined, and Piers parts his legs, letting Chris slide in between them. 

It’s different this time — they practically jumped at each other like animals that night after coming home from the barbecue, tearing each other’s clothes off and leaving a trail of them behind on the floor, bumping into walls and furniture alike. In the end they didn’t even make it to the bedroom. It was urgent, and needy, and desperate — clumsy almost. A continuation of what they started in the kitchen.

But now, there’s no urgency, no uncontrollable need. Now, they can take their time.

Chris is gentle with him, going in slowly, making sure it’s gonna hurt as little as possible, not even speeding up when Piers, getting rather impatient, tells him to. When he’s finally inside of him, Piers thinks that this is it. There’s no way anything better than this exists.

He’s never done this before — not this way round. It takes trust and the willingness to let go of any sense of control, and that’s not something he’s ever wanted to do for someone, ever. 

He looks up at Chris, moving his head up to meet his lips just as Chris commences rolling into him with a jerk of his hips. They find their rhythm, as they always do. It starts out slowly, Chris’s hips rocking forward, steadily, just deep enough to hit the spot that makes Piers squirm underneath him each time.

He digs his nails into Chris’s back, knowing that Chris’ll take it as a sign for more, to go faster, rougher, _now_. He does, grunting as he speeds up the rhythm of his thrusts, changing his angle and shifting slightly after a time to give Piers enough room to touch himself. 

In the end there’s no order to their movements anymore, and it’s amazing, better than he ever anticipated, just losing himself in Chris’s touch, _feeling_ him shudder inside of him, and then it’s Chris’s hand, coming to join his own, that tips Piers over the edge.

For a moment he forgets to breathe, simply silences his gasping into Chris’s shoulder, until the trembling stops, and they sag into each other’s arms, panting and exhausted. A good exhausted.

Outside, the rain and hail have cleared, and the soft light of sunrise has reached the sky, painting the white clouds in a range of pastel colors. It’s probably time to get up and be a normal working-class-citizen, but Piers decides that the world can fuck off today. 

It’s Chris’s day off anyway, and since Piers has the afternoon shift today, there’s absolutely no fathomable reason at all _not_ to spend the next few hours wrapped up in each other’s arms. Maybe hit the shower together later. 

No, today life is _good_. 

“You’re different,” Chris comments later, when they’re in the kitchen, wearing only their underwear while drinking coffee and making breakfast at 2 PM. “From when we first met.”

Piers flips the pancakes, the pan in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. He’s always found multitasking easy. “Different how?”

“Lighter. Happier. I don’t know.”

Piers releases a snort, turning around just briefly enough to throw Chris a disbelieving look. “Didn’t you just call me _grumpy_ this very morning?”

“You know what I mean.”

He _is_ , Piers supposes. Happy. And that without the BSAA, living the most mundane life possible. What a perplexing notion. 

The indistinct smell of smoke fills his nose, and for a second Piers thinks he’s somehow managed to burn the pancakes. He sets the mug on the counter, this time using the spatula to peek underneath the pancakes, finding no hints of black whatsoever. 

He furrows his brow and spins around, when he sees Chris with a lit cigarette between his lips, sees him exhale and release a cloud of smoke into the air. What the hell?

The last and only time he saw Chris smoke was in that bar in Eastern Europe, completely wasted and reeking like a goddamn chimney. 

Chris’s gaze is fixed on his own mug of coffee, oblivious, for once not paying attention to Piers. There’s a distant look in his eyes, making Piers swallow down the words he’s just been about to say. He looks almost haunted.

“I...” Chris starts, before he stops, taking another pull at the cigarette. “I dreamt. Tonight. About the accident.”

“Was there anything new this time?”

“Yeah,” Chris says. “There was... I think there was a woman there.”

Piers’s grip around the spatula tightens. “A woman?”

Chris nods. “Just standing there, in the middle of the road.”

“What did she look like?” Piers asks, trying to keep the strain out of his voice. “Did you recognize her?”

“Dark hair. Blue clothes. A dress, I think. I dunno, I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

 _Ada_. It’s gotta be. “What do you think it means? You think your memory’s coming back?”

Chris shakes his head, coming out of his reverie. “I don’t know. Maybe. But it could just as well be nothing. It’s probably just my mind making up things to cope. They said that could happen.” He puts out his cigarette in an ashtray that seems to have magically materialized out of thin air. Piers knows it hasn’t been there before. It hasn’t. Has it?

“What’s up with the smoking?” he finally asks, unable to shut up any longer. 

Chris looks taken aback, a half-amused expression on his face, as if he thinks Piers is joking. “What about it?”

“I thought you didn’t smoke.” 

It’s not as if he _minds_. He doesn’t, not one bit. But this... this doesn’t make any sense. He practically lives with the guy, he would _know_.

Chris becomes very still, and in a matter of seconds the amusement gives way to concern. “Piers, I’ve been smoking around you all the time.”

What? “No, you never—”

That’s when the headaches start. They overtake him, force him down to his knees. Violently, suddenly, without any prior warning. 

“Piers?” Chris is at his side in a flash, crouching down on the ground next to him. “Piers, what’s wrong?”

“ _Argh_.” For a long, agonizing moment there’s only static in his head, loud, unclear, accompanied by searing pain flaring through his skull. He starts to squirm, clenching his fists as if he’s about to fight, digging his fingernails into his palms.

Piers grunts again, seeking for a way to make it _stop_. Chris is still hunched at his right sight, and, without wanting to risk hurting him in some way, Piers hauls off with his left hand and punches the tiles on the floor, once, hard.

There’s a _snap_ just as sharp pain shoots through his wrist as his knuckles make contact with the ground, and then the headaches’s over. It doesn’t ease off, or slowly die away. It’s simply gone, disappeared in the fraction of a second, leaving just as abruptly as it had come. 

Chris stares at him, eyes wide. “What just happened?” 

“I don’t know,” Piers croaks out. “ _Fuck_ , my hand.”

“Let me see.”

Piers holds out his hand, and Chris carefully takes in-between his two own. It’s already swollen, the skin lacerated and bleeding around the knuckles. Probably fractured. It’s not the first time Piers has seen a hand looking like this. A certain someone has a habit of punching inanimate objects to let out his frustration. 

Chris gets him some ice, to at least attempt to reduce the swelling and take care of some of the pain. 

“Chris, I’m gonna need to go to a doctor,” Piers says, more calmly than he feels. “I think I fractured some bones.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“I can’t drive like this.” Piers gives a quiet sigh, already dreading what comes next. Neither Claire nor Steve are at home, and he sure as hell isn’t gonna call an ambulance for this. The alternative isn’t going to be pretty either. He doesn’t even wanna picture his mom’s reaction to this. “You’ll need to call my parents. Or a taxi. You know what? Screw the money and call a taxi. I think that’s better for all of us.”

Chris remains still for a long time, but then he shakes his head, suddenly determined. “No, I’ll do it. I’ll drive you.”

Piers is stunned for a moment, not knowing how to react, but then he nods, taking his injured hand into his healthy one, making sure to immobilize it as best as he can. 

Chris is tense the whole drive, gripping the steering while like his life depends on it, with drops of sweat glistening on his temple — but he _drives_ , and that alone manages to bring a little proud smile to Piers’s lips, in spite of the pain. 

As it turns out, the fracture is not as bad as he previously thought. There’s no surgery needed, but he does get a splint to keep his fingers immobilized and is told not to overstrain his hand for the next couple of weeks. When the doctor inquires why Piers punched a tile in the first place, he makes up some feeble excuse, feeling Chris’s worry-filled eyes fixed on him the entire time. 

Piers ignores it, just as he later ignores that unpleasant twist in his gut he gets whenever he sees Chris take a drag on a cigarette. The headaches are still there, not as violent as the first one, but still painful enough. He doesn’t tell Chris about them, because how would it help? He’s just gonna worry, and it wouldn’t change a thing. 

Their life goes on as normal — as normal as it ever was. 

Before they know it, it’s already the middle of September, and Piers can scarcely believe it when he sees the date on his phone when he checks the time. He’s been here for two and a half months. 

 _It feels like a lifetime_ , he thinks as he watches Chris throw a pack of Coco Pops into the shopping cart. 

“Seriously?” he says, raising an eyebrow at Chris. 

“Don’t ever you get those sudden cravings for Coco Pops in the middle of the night?”

“No.”

“Coco Pops, Piers,” Chris says, as if that could possible suffice as a well-founded argument. 

“That stuff is like 100 percent sugar, _Chris_.”

Chris forms a smile, putting _a second_ pack into the cart. “I love you, but don’t get between me and my cereal.”

Piers stops in his tracks the same moment Chris’s smile freezes on his face. Did he just—?

It’s not like in the movies. There’s no big revelation, no grand romantic gestures, no last kiss before the world comes to an end. They’re in the middle of Walmart, both kind of exhausted from spending the entire day at work, doing some last minute shopping because the fridge just _happened_ to be empty this evening, being as domestic as Piers has ever been in his entire life. In the aisle next to them they can hear a couple arguing, in the one after that a child throwing a tantrum over not getting some sweets, so loudly that it must echo through the entire store, and in the background there’s the faint sound of some annoying commercial for some new brand of soda, and it’s so _ordinary._

Quickly recovering from his initial shock, Piers takes a step closer. “And I love _you_ , so that’s why you can trust me to keep you occupied all night and make sure that the thought of Coco Pops won’t even occur to you.”

 _Still pretty damn cheesy, though,_ Piers thinks.

“I can still eat them for breakfast.”

“Not if I’m cooking you breakfast first,” Piers shoots back, somehow able to make the promise of cooking someone breakfast sound like a threat. “You’re sleeping longer than me, anyway.”

“You’re not gonna let me win this one, are you?”

“Nope.”

Chris cocks his head to the side, almost challengingly, and puts on the most serious expression he can muster, keeping eye-contact with Piers the entire time as his hand reaches out for yet another pack of cereal. It lands in the shopping cart with a thud.

“Oh, come on,” Piers huffs out. “You can’t possibly eat that much of this shit. You’re just doing that to piss me off.”

“Maybe.” Chris gives a shrug. “Maybe I like seeing you pissed off.”

“I hate you.”

“Didn’t you just tell me you loved me?”

“Is it too late to take it back?”

“Entirely too late,” Chris says, grabbing Piers by the hips and drawing him into his arms. Piers puts his hand on the nape of Chris’s neck, pulling him down him, feeling Chris’s lips part gladly under the pressure of his tongue. 

“Are we gonna be one of _those_ couples?” Piers mumbles against Chris’s mouth. 

“What’d you mean?”

“You know, those who can’t keep their hands off each other in public spaces and make everyone want to vomit with their disgustingly sweet displays of affection?”

“Oh, yeah,” Chris says, lifting one hand to gently trace the outline of Piers’s jaw. “We’re definitely one of _those_ couples.”

 _Really goddamn cheesy_ , Piers thinks as he closes his eyes and kisses him again. 

* * *

Everything goes so smoothly, so uneventfully, so _well_. That alone should have made him realize that there’s no way this is gonna last. 

It happens at the café. There’s nothing special about the day — it’s like any other. The weather is nice, Hayley is annoyingly cheerful, the customers as idiotic as ever. Just a normal day. But that’s the thing about disaster, isn’t it? There’s no build-up to it, no reasoning, no logic. It just strikes, unexpectedly, relentlessly, giving no time to prepare.

He’s just finished clearing one of the tables, when his vision grows blurry on his right side. At first he thinks he’s got something in his eye, but he soon realizes that that’s not it. It’s like a gray veil is covering his iris, and no matter how often he blinks or rubs his eye, it doesn’t go away. 

Startled, Piers almost drops the tray in his hand, quickly finding his balance again as he props himself up against the table with one hand. 

“Everything okay?” Hayley asks, taking the tray out of his hand before it falls. 

He snaps at her, and he _knows_ it’s unfair and unkind, knows that she only wants to help — but the truth is, he’s scared. He’s really fucking scared. He doesn’t want help, he doesn’t want to acknowledge this, acknowledge that something is very, very wrong. He just wants to fix it.

But he can’t, so he just adds it to the list of things he doesn’t tell Chris about. But he’s not relaxed anymore. He’s constantly on guard from now on, starts seeing threats behind every corner, sees things creeping into his life, gradually shattering this illusion. 

What the hell was he thinking? Did he truly believe it would be that easy? Him infecting himself, him dying — that it would all be simply crossed out, like it never happened? 

When Claire comes home one day with an entirely different haircut, he’s gotten so paranoid that he can’t even think clearly anymore. 

“Did Claire always have short hair?” 

It’s only when Steve looks at him like he’s an idiot, that Piers realizes that he said it out loud. “You know, there’s this thing called a hair dresser?”

“Right,” Piers says, shaking his head at himself. “Of course.”

The nightmares don’t stop either, only grow more frequent, more violent, until they’re impossible to ignore. It’s almost every night now that he wakes up, soaked in sweat, the captain’s voice echoing in his mind, over and over again. 

Of course Chris sees it, no matter how well Piers thinks he can hide it. He’s concerned, wants to understand it — but how the hell does Piers even begin to explain? It’s not like he understands any of it any more than Chris does. 

They’re sitting on the sofa, watching one of those superhero movies Chris adores so much. Piers is quieter than usual, resting his head on Chris’s lap, just enjoying the closeness, trying not to think. Times like these are the only times he still feels like himself. 

Bear is sitting at their feet, whining and yelping for food, as she has for the last half hour already.

“I’ll go and feed her,” Piers says, and when he gets up, his arm brushes against Chris’s, just slightly, and he can feel a jolt as their skin meets, like a pulse, something that’s definitely _electric_. 

“Woah, the hell?” Chris says, forming a light, embarrassed smile, because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what this means. “Does your prothesis have a habit of being charged?”

Piers gapes at his right arm, looking for any hints of electricity, any forms of mutations. Then Chris’s words sink in. He looks up, staring blankly at Chris as his stomach drops. “Prothesis?”

When his eyes flicker back to his arm again, he feels like someone just pushed him out of a flying plane without a parachute. No, no, no, no, no. This can’t be. 

It’s gone. 

And in it its place is a thing. A prosthetic arm. A prosthetic arm he’s never lain eyes on before in his life. 

And that’s it, Piers thinks. That’s the last straw.

“Piers?”

Piers holds up his healthy arm, trying to keep Chris back. “No, stay away.” 

Not listening — _of course_ — Chris takes another step closer. “It’s okay. Just talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Stop. Chris, stop. I can’t— Don’t come any closer. Please.” He keeps the prothesis behind his back, not letting it any way near Chris. Piers isn’t gonna risk another blast of electricity, not when he’s not sure if he’s able to control it. And right now, he’s not able to control _anything_.

Chris is still standing in front of him, looking torn. His lips are parted, as if he wants to say something, but finds nothing that would be right, that would be enough. At his side, he flexes his fingers, like he wants to reach out, and Piers wishes he could, wishes they could just go back to plain, boring, and wonderful _normal_. They can’t.

“I’m sorry,” Piers says, and then he turns around, leaving the apartment and Chris as quickly as he can. He starts his car and drives, without direction or purpose. He doesn’t know where the hell is supposed to go, he just knows that he can’t stay here any longer. 

After driving around aimlessly for what feels like hours, he stops the car in some back road. For a while, he feels numb, almost. He keeps staring straight ahead, breathing heavily, the hands still wrapped around the steering wheel. 

Then anger hits him, and he starts punching the wheel with his prosthetic arm, beating into it without any restraint or control, because it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? It’s not as if it’s real. It’s not real, nothing of this is real, it’s not fucking real, none of it—

“Is this some joke to you?” Piers yells, thinking that if there is a God, he’s full of shit. “Do you enjoy watching me suffer? Why the hell couldn’t you just have left me die like I was supposed to? At least _then_ I was ready! You fucking, sadistic piece of—”

He throws one last hard punch against the wheel, and then he breaks down, feeling a sob tremor through his body. He doesn’t cry, not really. His eyes are stinging, but not with tears. No, they’re almost painfully dry, so he buries his face in his hands, leaning forward, and now that the rage slowly ebbs away, only hollowness remains. 

What now? How does he move on from this? Lock himself in his apartment and wait for it to be over? Do it himself? Because that’s the next step, isn’t it? Dying, disappearing, ceasing to be, whatever. For good this time.

Piers presses his lips together and sucks in a deep breath in an attempt to order his thoughts. 

He drives back to his apartment, gladly shutting the door behind him, taking in the silence, actually finding it kind of comforting.

At least until he sees two familiar silhouettes sitting on the sofa. 

“How’d you get in here?” he asks bluntly. He sees no point in trying to be kind, or even polite. It’s not as if that’s really his mom sitting there. Just a messed up shadow of her.

“We have a key,” his mom says, quickly getting it out of here pocket to show it to Piers, as if that would somehow manage to calm him down. Her eyes are swollen and red, and just from the sight of her he knows she’s been crying. Which doesn’t make sense. But lately, nothing much does anymore. “You gave us a key, remember? We agreed that it’s for the best, after you—”

“It’s all right, Son,” his dad cuts in, in that strangely calm voice of his. 

“Nothing’s all right!” Piers snaps. “What the hell is this? What are you doing in my apartment?”

“Please, Piers, just calm down,” his mom tries again. Her bottom lip is trembling, and Piers can tell that she’s just seconds from bursting into tears again. “I know you may not remember him, but Doctor Anderson is going to help you, okay? He’s been your doctor for years, and he helped you once before— He won’t do anything, all right, honey? He just wants to talk. It will all makes sense, I promise you.”

“What?” 

A man comes into view then, a man Piers has never seen before. He takes a step back, instinctively, suddenly feeling like an animal that’s been backed into a corner. 

The man — Doctor Anderson, he supposes — just keeps talking not to him, but at him, quietly and slowly, as if he’s trying to make Piers calm enough to give him a killing shot. There’s talk of the special forces, of him losing his arm while being on a mission, of suffering a head trauma, of losing his memories, of a lingering confusion, PTSD.

 _No, that’s Chris, that’s not me_ , he wants to say, but the doctor just keeps listing symptoms, like mood swings, and headaches, and insomnia, and difficulties telling what’s true and what’s false, hallucinations _,_ and the more words leave the stranger’s mouth the more Piers feels the rug being pulled away right under his feet, feels like falling, thinking, there’s no way this could have gotten worse, but it _did_. 

"You have to understand that you created false memories to cope with the traumatizing events that happened to you. A healthy arm and a functioning eye-sight are included in those _safe_ memories, so to speak. Among other things.”

Then there’s talk of mental instability, long, complicated words that don’t sound familiar, and therapy and medication, of him making sure to keep taking it so something like this doesn’t happen again, that it’ll all make sense soon, and all Piers thinks is, no, nothing of this is making _any_ sense, stop fucking saying it will. The words keep raining down on him, still spoken quietly, softly, but they might as well have been screamed at him — it wouldn’t make a difference.

"We had a similar conversation before," the strangers says when it becomes apparent that Piers doesn't believe him, "Just after you were released from the hospital. You were showing the same symptoms as you do now. Returning to therapy is vital for your recovery, Piers."

“You see, Doctor Anderson, he called us when he realized that you hadn’t picked up your medication lately,” his mom cuts in again, talking so quickly that she’s almost stumbling over her own words. “And we worried, of course, but you seemed fine. And happy— happier than we’ve seen you in years, and... And we couldn’t take that away from you.”

“At least not until we heard what happened. Christopher called us and told us that you were confused by the sight of your prosthetic arm, and that is when we knew for sure,” his dad says. “We think it would be better if you moved back in with us. Like before.”

 _Before?_ Piers feels himself shake his head, sees his mother approaching him, trying to touch his shoulder. 

“No,” he hears himself say, in a voice that doesn’t sound like it belongs to him. “No, don’t touch me.”

He staggers backwards, hears his mom calling after him. “Piers! Where are you going? Honey, please, just let us—”

“Just leave me alone.”

He storms out of the apartment, this time on foot, heading for the park because he knows it’s close and that it’s crowded — crowded enough to disappear quickly if his parents or anyone else is trying to come after him. 

He ends up at the place he was with Chris, all those months back, sagging down to the ground and leaning against the tree. He pulls his phone out his pocket, dialing Chris’s number.

It rings, once, twice, three times, four times... For a terrifying second Piers almost thinks that maybe they’re right, maybe he’s just crazy after all, maybe he’s so fucked-up in his head that he imagined all of this. Maybe Chris isn’t even real, but just someone he conjured up, someone he _created_ to cope with whatever is supposed to have happened to him. A hallucination. 

Is that what he is now? Disabled, half-blind, mentally unstable — all of it caused by a past he doesn’t remember? 

“Piers.” There’s relief in Chris’s voice, and Piers feels just the same, releasing a quick exhale.

“I can’t believe you talked to my parents.” He doesn’t try to suppress his anger. Anger is easy, anger’s familiar. 

“Piers, I was worried,” Chris returns. “You just took off! What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“And so you flat out asked them if I was crazy?”

“No, I asked them if something like that ever happened before,” Chris says, and Piers can hear the frustration in his voice as he continues, “I asked them if they knew what was going on with you, because you wouldn’t talk to me or even try to explain.”

“And? What’d they tell you?”

“They told me about how you lost your arm. How you hurt your head.” There’s a pause, in which Chris audibly takes a deep breath. God, he sounds exhausted. “How you had trouble remembering things after. And... and that you stopped going to therapy and went off the meds.”

“So the whole damn ugly truth, huh?”

It’s silent after that, but Piers doesn’t want to hang up, not yet. He feels calmer already, just knowing that Chris is there, on the other side, as close as it gets. The anger he feels is already starting to subside, and just like that the fear he so resolutely tries to hold in check threatens to come to the surface. _Damn it._

His mind feels like it’s been torn right open, and he closes his eyes, pinches the back of his nose, tries not to think too much about this means, about what happened, about what apparently _never_ happened. He’s gotta stay in control, calm down again. Focus on what’s here, what’s now. 

“Where are you?” Chris asks after a while, and his voice has lost its sharpness, having gained a gentle quality instead. “I’ll pick you up.”

“And then what?” Piers asks, but even he finds not enough energy to keep fighting. “I’m not taking the goddamn meds, Chris. And I’m not going back there. I’m not gonna have them look at me like— like I’m some broken thing that needs to be fixed.”

“Then let’s not,” Chris says. “Let’s get away from all of this shit for a while. Just for a day or two.”

“Where will we go?” Piers asks, deciding to indulge Chris in this crazy notion that running away is gonna make this okay again. Running away has never fixed anything. The captain is the best example for that.

“Well, Hawaii’s out the question, since Claire and Steve just went there today.”

Despite himself, Piers feels his lips twitch. “What about China? You ever been to China?” 

“No, never,” Chris says. “Don’t you think it’s a bit too hot there this time of year?”

“Entirely too hot. And loud.” 

“What about Raccoon City, then?”

“Woah, that’s way too far away, Chris. Be realistic here.”

“I’m serious. My parents had this cabin, in the Arklay Mountains. We used to go fishing there. My dad and I. I haven’t been back, not since— But I guess it’s still there. I think Barry still goes there sometimes. So it’s gotta be.”

In the end he agrees, because how could he not? He doesn’t want to be alone with his head, and Chris has this gift of giving him hope, of making a situation look far less daunting than it actually is — he always had. It’s what Piers admired most about him. 

Or did he? Are these his own real memories? Or just details he made up? A constructed image of Chris he created, a lie his traumatized mind made up on the spot? Because if all of what he just learned is true, then they’ve never met. The BSAA isn’t real. There are no monsters, no BOWs, no C-Virus.

Just him and his fucked-up head, nothing else.

When Chris shows up, he moves over to him with wide, firm steps, the face expressionless and matter-of-factly, and before Piers has the chance to say anything, he gets pulled into a tight embrace.

“I’m gonna get you through this, Piers,” Chris says into his neck. “You hear me?”

Chris said that to him before. Word for word. At this point, he no longer questions it. It’s like everything blends together, the memories — _fake_ memories, he reminds himself — the present, his thoughts. 

Chris still has his arms around him, squeezing him once, hard, and rubbing his back before letting go again. And that alone tells Piers more about Chris’s current emotional state than words ever could. With Chris it’s always about physical contact — all of Chris’s emotions leak through his gestures. It starts with that hand fiddling he does when he’s nervous or uncomfortable, a reassuring pat on the back or the shoulder he gives others, the wall-punching he does when he’s overcome by frustration or anger. It’s a head-first attitude, mingled with that ever present underlying layer of gentleness. 

“It’s okay,” Piers tells him, though it’s not.

On the ride, they spend the time talking — about everything but the topic that’s on both of their minds. Maybe it’s just what they need, this pretence. When they arrive at the cabin, it soon becomes clear how long it’s been unused for. The furniture and decorations are outdated, kind of old-fashioned and used. No tv, no computer, no wifi. There are no cobwebs, but there’s still a lot of with dusts, and there’s this staleness hanging in the air, something distinct that can only be described as _old_ , but it’s peaceful and quiet, and right now, that’s all that matters.

Chris doesn’t ask any questions when Piers pushes him against the wall as soon they’ve closed the door behind them, just lets Piers pin him down, meets the force of Piers’s mouth, moves his own hands under the fabric of Piers’s shirt, pulling him closer to him. He needs this, this closeness, needs Chris. And this is easier than talking.

With one hand pressed against the wall for support, he shoves his other down Chris’s jeans, palming him, feeling Chris gasp against his mouth. Continuing to stroke, Piers starts rutting against Chris, seeking friction, and it’s rougher than usual, and quicker too. They don’t even make it any further than that, both of them finding their release still propped up against the wall, leaving them trembling on their legs. 

Chris doesn’t let go of him when it’s over, just keeps on clinging onto him, and it’s a strange position, both of them breathing heavily into each other’s clothes, but Piers lets him hold him, just for a moment longer. Then suddenly there’s a suspicious lump in his throat, and an unwelcome stinging in his eyes, so he bites the inside of his cheek, trying keep himself in check. It’s not working. He mumbles a quick excuse, briefly brushing over the back of Chris’s hand, and disappears into what he thinks is the bathroom.

First checking if the water still works, he goes on to find some clean towels, and hits the shower. He takes longer than he usually would, knowing that once he steps out of that bathroom, they’ll have to stop avoiding the topic and talk. 

After fifteen minutes he realizes that there’s no way he can draw this out any longer, and when he enters the living room again, he finds Chris sitting at the table, the head in his hands, just staring at the wooden surface. 

As soon as he catches sight of Piers, he sits upright again, giving him a quick, reassuring smile. Piers takes place on the chair opposite of him, somehow unable to return the smile. He always found that hard. Pretending to be happy, even if it’s for the benefit of others. 

“Found some beer in the fridge,” Chris says. “And it’s not expired yet. Barry must have been here some time ago. Lucky us.”

Piers just nods. 

“I found some food as well. Some cans. So we should be fine for a few days.” Chris starts rubbing his thumb against the palm of his hand again. “I’m sorry, I know how much you hate canned food. We probably should have planned this better.”

“Have you told them where we’ve gone?” 

“No.” Chris lets out a quick exhale, leaning back into his chair. “I just said that we’ll be away for a few days, and that they shouldn’t worry.”

“Because you’re looking after me? To make sure I don’t do anything crazy?” Piers knows he’s being a dick, but the words just flow out of his mouth. 

“I’m not looking after you, Piers. You’re not a child, and you’re not crazy.”

“You know, I really wish that was true.”

“It _is_ true,” Chris insists, his voice laced with a definite sense of certainty, as if there’s not even the possibility of him being wrong with this. “I know that you must be going through hell right now, not knowing whether anything you know is real, not remembering what happened. _I know_. But it happens, Piers, this dissociation, amnesia, whatever it is. Just because my memory hasn’t come back yet, doesn’t mean yours won’t either. They can treat this, you know. This isn’t the end of the world.”

“But it is!” Piers yells. “It’s the end of _my_ goddamn world, Chris! If that doctor is telling the truth, if my head is... broken, then everything I know is a lie. It means my life never existed, _you_ never existed.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

Piers wipes his hand over his face, frustrated beyond measure. “I know.”

“Then explain it to me!” Chris says loudly. He bites his lip, and says, softer now, “Damn it, Piers, talk to me for once. You can’t keep running away from this. Just... Just _try_ to explain it to me, and maybe then I can finally understand.”

Piers gives a scoff. “Kinda sure you’ll be scared of me if I do that. Either that, or you’ll put me back in the car and drive me to the nearest mental institution.”

Chris keeps looking at him, blankly. “I’m not doing either of that, and you know it.”

“Okay. Fine.” Piers leans forward, behaving a bit more confrontative than is probably suited for this kind of reveal. “You want the truth? The truth is I’ve _known_ you, Chris. For more than three years. We’ve met for the first time a few months after you came back from Africa.”

“Africa?” Chris echoes, drawing his eyebrows together. “I’ve never been to Africa. Piers, we met three months ago. I’ve never seen you before that. I would remember.”

Piers gives a humorless laugh. “It’s more complicated than that.”

So he starts talking, tells Chris the truth, _his_ truth, and a part of him can’t believe he’s actually doing this. He lets out some things, like the fact that all his friends are dead, Richard and Forest and probably Steve too, and everything concerning Wesker. He doesn’t mention Raccoon City, or its destruction, knowing that it’s too much to handle for now, when all the other stuff is already too overwhelming to fully grasp. Some stuff he just brushes over, like the things that happened in Edonia. 

Instead, Piers tells him about the BSAA, about them being partners, about bioterrorism and BOWs, about China, and their last mission there. Piers’s last mission.

“And then I saw no other way than to shove you into the escape pod, and shut it before you had the chance to stop me.” He pauses for a moment, tearing his eyes away from Chris, looking into empty space instead. “And you... You kept hammering against the window, yelling at me, ordering me to open the door. Like I said, _stubborn_. You were crying. I still remember that. It’s practically seared into my memory. And then the pod lifted off, and you were gone. I thought I was dying, and I must have blacked out, because... because the next thing I remember is waking up on a sofa, you telling me that you run me over with your bike. Here. In a world that wasn’t even remotely familiar to me, just seconds after I thought I had said goodbye to you forever.” He looks back at Chris, unsure how to judge the expression he finds on his face. “Still don’t think I’m crazy?”

“How’d they die?” is all Chris asks. “Andy, Ben, Carl, and—”

“And Finn?” Piers supplies, seeing Chris freeze at the name, then nod. “On a mission in Eastern Europe. There was a woman. Ada. She was part of a bioterrorist organization, but we didn’t know that at the time. She injected all of them with a virus, same one I injected myself with. You wouldn’t leave them, even after it was too late. I had to drag you out of there.” He doesn’t mention Finn turning into BOW, beating into Chris, doesn’t mention the amnesia, of Chris running away to become a drunk. There’s no need for him to know that.

“Finn, he— He was so naive. So innocent, in a way. But eager. You could tell that he _wanted_ to be there, you know? God, he practically worshipped you. Was he still like that? Here?”

“Yeah,” Chris grates, visibly swallowing. 

“And you had a partner,” Piers says, only just now remembering. “Before me, I mean. Jill. Jill Valentine. I never found anything—”

“Jill?” Chris repeats, and just by the way he says her name Piers knows that she does exist here after all. “How did you...?”

“I tried to find her. Right on the first day. But there was absolutely nothing to find.”

“She’s a cop. In Tall Oaks. At least she was when I last saw her a couple of years ago. I can’t imagine she’d want to show up in any search engines.”

Piers hadn’t considered that. “That makes sense.”

It’s quiet then, but Chris doesn’t look scared, or appalled, or like he’s searching for the quickest way out of here. No, he looks thoughtful. As if he’s going over Piers’s words in his mind, trying to make sense of them.

“You can’t play the piano,” Piers says before he can stop himself. “You make bad puns. Incredibly bad puns. But you still love doing them. I think you like the way it eases the tension in tough situations. You’re one of the best marksman I’ve ever seen.” A small smile does steal its way onto his lips then. “Almost as good as me. An exceptional pilot. But you were never arrogant or cocky about it. You always treated us like family, all of us, no matter our rank. You’re the one who recruited me for the BSAA. And to this day, it was still the best decision I ever made.” He shuts his mouth then, feeling like he’s said too much. 

Chris is still staring at him, no longer seeming thoughtful. There’s a curious softness to his features, and for the flash of a second Piers mistakes it as pity.

“I know this doesn’t prove anything,” Piers adds after a while, still feeling the heaviness of Chris’s gaze on him. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Chris says. “I believe you.”

“You—” Piers closes his mouth, opens it just to press it shut again. “Honestly, that is _not_ a smart choice on your behalf. It’s pretty dumb, actually, given what you know about me and my supposed mental state. Isn’t that what my parents told you? That I created a new identity, made up false memories because apparently I couldn't deal with my trauma?” He puts as much venom as he can in that last sentence, still refusing to accept it. “Because _maybe_ that’s simply all there is. Maybe that’s just what I am — crazy. Or I could just as well be a psychopathic stalker with an incredibly big imagination.”

“Doesn’t sound very likely to me,” Chris says, so calmly and sensibly that Piers mostly finds it exasperating, more so than astonishing. 

“And me being put into an entirely different universe does?”

“No,” Chris concedes, leaning forwards, “but don’t you see how much sense everything suddenly makes?”

“How in _hell_ is any of this making _any_ sense at all?” 

“Your behavior. Those jokes that only you seemed to get, all of it. The things you knew, the things you said, like you’ve known me. It’s because you did. And— And you knew about Jill. And about Finn. How else would you know about them? That’s not something you can just make up.”

“How can you even consider this as a real possibility?” Piers asks, suddenly questioning _Chris’s_ sanity on top of his own. 

“Because _you_ do,” Chris says simply. “And I trust you.”

“Then you must be crazier than I am,” Piers eventually huffs out, shaking his head and looking away.

Chris reaches out then, putting his hand on top of Piers’s left one, the real one. “Hey. I said I’ll get you through this, and I will, all right? Whatever it is.”

Piers turns his hand over, interlacing their fingers, still shaking his head at  this entire mess of a situation. “You know, I never thought it was the other way round. I always thought that this was the fake version. Me, living on borrowed time, maybe getting a second chance.”

“It is,” Chris says, insistent. “But it isn’t fake. Don’t you see? _This_ —” he gives Piers’s fingers a squeeze, “this is real. _I’m_ real. And whatever happened or didn’t happen in the past doesn’t change a thing about that.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor... When I say this, it should mean laughter, not poison." — from _Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_

Piers is standing in front of the window, looking out, but not really seeing anything. It’s bright inside the cabin, and pitch black on the outside. He can only make out the soft glow of the city lights far-away. It reminds him of the Burton’s house, sitting on the porch, feeling invincible for once. He doesn’t. Not anymore. For the first time he feels fragile, as if the smallest of things is able to break him apart with a mere flick of a finger, shatter this imaginary layer of safety he’s built around himself. 

His gaze wanders down, to his prosthetic arm. He turns it over, examining it carefully, but ever since that day at Chris’s apartment, there hasn’t been another discharge of electricity. He doesn’t even know what to think about that. Was that just his imagination?

He can hear footsteps behind him, knows whom they belong to, feels the anxiety creeping into his bones despite of the reassurance his mind tries to give him. He’s not sure he can trust his mind anymore.

Two bottles of beer are placed on the window sill, and then two strong arms envelop him from behind. Piers leans into the embrace, closing his eyes. He focuses on Chris’s smell, on the warmth of his body pressed against his, the even breaths against the crook of his neck. 

For a long while, they don’t speak, don’t feel the need to. The tender kisses planted on his shoulder get the message across quite clearly.  

“You know, back there...” It feels wrong, speaking of the past in such a blunt manner. He catches Chris’s eye in the reflection of the window, seeing not alarm but interest on his face, giving him the reassurance to keep talking. “I never imagined you being this... gentle.”

This makes Chris stop. “Imagined? Weren’t we...?”

“No,” Piers says, shaking his head. 

“Why not?”

“For a million reasons. I was your first lieutenant, and you my superior. It wouldn’t have been right to let it compromise our work. The mission takes priority, it always does. And you never... I don’t know, I’m just not sure if you were even interested. And even if you were, you wouldn’t have let yourself be distracted by this.”

“Don’t you think you were both capable enough to handle that kind of thing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Piers replies, not knowing why he suddenly feels so irritated. He reaches for one of the beer bottles and takes a large sip. “It’s not like it matters anymore, does it?”

“Would you go back?” Chris asks, quieter now. “If you could?”

“No,” Piers says. “I _died_ , Chris. I turned myself into a monster and was blown to pieces. There’s no going back to that.” He lets out a sigh, swallowing down the lingering remnants of irritation he still feels, and turns around to face Chris. “Even if I could— On that very first day, sure, I would have. Without hesitation. I wanted nothing more than to get back. Back to the BSAA, back to the captain, back to where I’m useful. I didn’t— I never thought I would be content in a world where I’m not fighting against bioterrorism. Back there, any of us could have died at any given moment. And we were ready to, you know? We knew we would have given our life for the right cause. But now... I don’t know, maybe it’s selfish to say this, but I’m glad to be here. To have gotten to know a life without all that. It’s a perspective of the world I never considered before.”

The ghost of a smile forms on Chris’s lips. “Well, I’m glad you’re here, too.” 

Piers lets out a whiff of air through his nose, feeling his discomfort slowly disintegrate. 

Chris comes forward, cupping Piers’s face to press a soft kiss against his forehead. 

“Did I say ‘gentle’ earlier?” Piers says, trying very hard not to let the smile that’s threatening to crack his expressionless mask shine through. “I take it back. What I really meant to say was ‘sappy’. You’re unbelievably sappy, Chris Redfield.”

“Shut up, you like me being sappy,” Chris says, and now Piers does smile, grabbing a fistful of Chris’s hair to pull him down to him and meet his lips. What he doesn’t expect is two hands reaching underneath his backside and lifting him up into the air, with more strength than Piers thought Chris to be capable of. He’s taken completely by surprise, and the bottle in his hand slips out of his fingers and falls down to ground with a clash. He supposes he’s gonna be sulky about that later, but right now in this moment he just thinks, _fuck it_. 

He instinctively wraps his legs around Chris’s hips, keeps his hand placed on the back of his head for support, and soon the kisses turn searing. Navigation proves harder than it looks, and Chris, walking backward, causes them to hit the wall more than once, the impact a bit painful in all their eagerness, but Piers minds no bit of it. 

After almost stumbling over the coffee table, he’s lain down onto the sofa, on his back, Chris still towering above him, their lips not breaking contact. Chris’s mouth soon wanders to the most sensitive spot of Piers’s neck, eliciting a moan, and the way his lips form into a quick smile in-between tells Piers that Chris knows exactly what he’s doing.

He looks up in awe, watches Chris take off his shirt, how he carelessly throws it to the ground. A hand reaches out, cupping the side of his face, the thumb gently grazing over the highest point of his cheekbone. Piers leans into the touch, turning his head to press his lips against Chris’s palm. 

For a long moment, Chris just stares at him, as if he’s taking in every single features of Piers’s face. 

Piers swallows. The look in Chris’s eyes is unguarded — so intense, and all-consuming, and revealing. There are no secrets, no doubt. It’s _so much_ , and it’s all there to see, just for him.

He closes his eyes, pulls off his own shirt. Parts his legs and lets his hands roam over Chris’s naked chest, lets them wander to his back, pulls him closer to his own body, brushes his lips against Chris’s.

Then, Chris moves downward, taking his time as he peppers Piers’s pectorals with kisses, some chaste, some open-mouthed and hot. He trails down his upper body, lingering when he reaches the V-shaped line underneath his belly button. His hands continue their journey below, opening Piers’s jeans, pulling them down. All of it is so deliberately slow, and Piers has to bite down on his lips not to tell Chris to hurry the hell up. 

He’s so hard that it’s painful. It shouldn’t be possible to _want_ a person this much. He almost feels angry by the sheer force of this feeling. Still, Chris takes his time, lifting one of Piers’s legs over his shoulder. He moves on to kiss the insides of thighs, carefully pressing his lips against the skin, licking it once or twice, but ignoring everything else for the time being. All of it is bordering on teasing. 

“Chris,” Piers groans out, almost ready to beg — _almost_ — and then Chris looks up, looking him into the eyes right before he finally takes him into his mouth. Piers raises his hand to his own mouth, biting down on it to keep his voice under control, at the same time having to use all of his willpower to keep his hips from jerking up. Pressing his head back against one of the cushions, he just lets Chris do whatever he wants. Not that that’s a particular difficult decision to make, because fuck, he’s so _good_ at it. Putting pressure on just the right spots, using his tongue in-between, his hands doing the rest.

He tries to draw it out, make it last as long as possible, slowing down his movements, stopping in-between, but Piers soon feels the heat pooling in his groin, his breaths growing uneven and shaky. He curls his fingers around a cushion. “Chris, I’m gonna—”

When he comes, it’s hard and intense, leaving him shuddering for a few long moments as Chris carries him through it, not ceasing until it’s over, swallowing once it is.

“Wow,” Piers breathes once Chris lies down beside him. “I guess you’re right. I really _do_ like you being sappy.”

“See?” 

They fall asleep after that, not bothering to get up from the couch and to the bedroom. When Piers wakes, it’s to the smell of something that’s most definitely _burning_. It’s still dark, so he waits a while until his eyes have adjusted to the lack of light and then climbs off of Chris, careful not to wake him, making his way to the dresser where he left his phone to check the time. It’s just past 4 AM, he sees, and there’s no cell reception anymore, though he knows he’s had one before. He takes a deep breath through his nose, trying to pin point where the smell is coming from. It’s not from inside. Weird.

Furrowing his brow, Piers tip-toes to the door, taking care not to step into the broken shards of his beer bottle, and goes outside to take a look. With them being far up the Arklay Mountains, he’s got a pretty good view of the entire city below them. First, he thinks it’s the city lights that are illuminating the sky far above. But then, he sees the faint outlines of smoke, sees the flames blazing, hears the distant sound of sirens, one or two helicopters circling in the air above the buildings. 

No. Below him, Raccoon City is burning.

He rushes inside again, turning on the lights as he does so, and then dashes over to the sofa to shake Chris awake.

“Wake up. Chris, _wake up_.”

Chris groans, sleepy and disoriented. His lids flutter open for a brief moment, but then he turns around, batting Piers’s hand away, apparently trying to go back to sleep again. 

“Chris!” Piers repeats, louder this time. “Chris, come on. Get up.”

Chris whirls around again, making a face. “What is it?”

“You better take a look at this.”

“What’s that smell?” Chris mumbles as he groggily gets to his feet. “Did we leave the stove on or something?”

Piers goes back outside, Chris following him a bit grumpily. He comes to an halt, looking first at the devastation before him, then back at Chris. _Please tell me you’re seeing this too._

Chris’s brow wrinkles, and for a terribly long second Piers is sure that this is it. He’s having hallucinations, has reached the point of no return. 

Then there’s a thundering crash, followed by a flare of flames shooting up into the sky as one of the helicopters starts spinning around, unruly, spiraling down until it collapses against one of the buildings. _Boom_. The explosion is calamitous, filling the air above the city with even more blackening smoke. He thinks he can hear people screaming, frantically, scared. 

Beside him, Chris lets out a gasp. “Son of a—”

Piers remains standing on the spot, frozen, struck with an unfamiliar sense of terror. This isn’t a hallucination. This is happening for real. 

“ _Damn_ ,” Chris says. “I got no reception. What about you? Piers?”

Piers’s gaze remains straight ahead as he absently shakes his head. “Me neither.”

“Shit,” Chris curses again. “What the hell is happening down there? It looks like the end of the world.”

No, just the end of Raccoon City — if assumption is right. And if history is indeed repeating itself... Then he knows what this means, knows what should be done, knows how to help. And he _wants_ to, more than anything. But how is he gonna do any of that? How’s he gonna be able to make a difference? With one arm? Alone, with no weapons, with no team of experienced soldiers at his side? It’s futile. No matter how much he wishes it was different, no matter how much he hates to admit it to himself, he’s gotta accept that he’s beaten.

“Terrorists?” Chris guesses. 

“A different kind of them,” Piers says, more calmly than he feels.

Chris’s eyes widen, and he puts a hand on Piers’s shoulder, his expression turning urgent. “What do you know? Did this— did this happen?”

“Yeah,” Piers croaks out. His throat feels dry, and the world around him feels like it’s spinning. He takes a deep breath, but it isn’t helping. 

“Tell me.”

“We need to leave,” Piers only says. “Before it’s too late.”

“What? I can’t—  I can’t just _leave_. My friends are still there. Richard, and Forest, and— We need to make sure they’re okay.”

“It’s too late, Chris!” Piers says, louder and with more force now. “It’s no use. We can’t stop this. We need to leave _now_.”

“What are you saying? Piers, what is happening? What caused this?”

Piers keeps his gaze fixed on the disaster unfolding before him, roaming his mind for anything he remembers, all the bits and pieces he read, things he’s been told, stories he’s seen on the news when he was a child. An idea dawns on him then, and without giving Chris a reply, he runs back to the cabin, taking hold of his cell to check the date. September 23rd. That leaves them 7 days before the city is wiped off the earth. Again. 

Why is this happening again? Why now? Why here? A million questions find their way into Piers’s mind, and he still feels nauseous, another headache creeping up on him again. He grimaces, clenching his fist at his side to force himself to get focused.

He turns to Chris, meeting blue eyes filled with unease. “Chris, listen to me. If I’m right— then the entire city is overrun by hostiles. Zombies. Other bio-organic weapons. Stuff of nightmares. The police, the military, even the special ops, they’re gonna be completely overwhelmed. They haven’t been trained to handle this. It’s a virus, and it’s gonna spread. There’s no stopping it, not yet. They’re gonna try to get it under control, but they won’t. It’ll take a while before they realize it, but when they do...”

“What then?”

Piers exhales, seeing no way to sugar coat this. “The government, they’re gonna order a missile strike, and that’s it. The entire city and all of its population will be annihilated.”

“No,” Chris breathes, shaking his head. “Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe this isn’t what this is—”

 _Always in denial, even now_. “It’s the same date, Chris. The same city. It’s too much to write it off as mere coincidence. Trust me.”

Chris presses his lips together, clenching his jaw as he makes a vague gesture towards the city. “We need to get there.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll warn people. Try to get as many survivors out as we can. Get to Forest and the others and get them out of the city before the missile hits. If anyone knows how to get through there, it’s you.”

“Chris—” _This is suicide_ , Piers wants to say. _There’ll be zombies there. Things you’ve never dealt with before, things you’re simply not able to handle. And I can’t protect you, not this time. Chances are, we’ll both die. Gruesomely, painfully — definitely._

“I’m not leaving them behind,” Chris persists, with a sense of resolution Piers knows all too well, and just like that he knows that any more arguing on his part won’t change a thing. Chris won’t budge an inch on this. “How long do we have?”  
“Last time the city lasted a week. Most of the population was already dead by then,” Piers says, defeated. “But it’s no guarantee. I have no idea what rules there are to this.”

“Then let’s not waste any more time. Come on.”

* * *

Piers tries to go in as prepared as possible, knowing that there’s really no preparation that could possibily suffice. But still — they park the car about half a mile outside of the city border, not wanting to risk not being able to get away with it later. They take some hunting knives with them that Chris found in one of the drawers in the cabin. It’s not much, and it’s certainly not enough, but it’s better than nothing. 

He tells Chris everything he knows about the Raccoon City Incident, everything he knows about zombies and the BOWs they’re probably gonna encounter once they passed through the city lines. It feels surreal, talking to him about this.

“They’re slow, but don’t underestimate them,” Piers says once they’re on foot. “One zombie alone might be easy to take out, but a group of them has no trouble overwhelming you. We have a better chance if we avoid any contact at all when possible. Running isn’t always the cowardly option — sometimes it’s just necessary to survive. Especially ‘cause we don’t have a gun.”

Chris nods, his expression wary and a bit disbelieving. Piers doesn’t blame him. He’d be more worried if Chris wouldn’t be having a reaction like this — the ideas of actual zombies walking the earth must seem ludicrous to someone who’s never had to deal with them. Piers wouldn’t know. He was meager eleven years old when Raccoon City was destroyed and the world forever changed.

“Anything else I should know?” Chris asks.

“Don’t let them bite you. One bite and it’s most likely over.”

“Just one bite, huh?”

“Like I said. It’s a virus. That’s one of the ways it’s transmitted.”

They encounter no difficulties entering the city. There aren’t any barricades up yet, and, having left the car behind and being on foot, it’s easy to navigate through the big cluster of abandoned and totaled vehicles on the roads. 

So far no BOW or zombie encounter. The streets are empty, almost eerily so — but Piers knows how fast the tables can turn in that department. 

“We need to get to Warren Street,” Chris says. “Rich and Bridgette live near Raccoon Press.”

“Downtown?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a long walk.”

They head around the corner, coming to a halt at the sight before them. It’s like walking into another world. Or straight into hell. Corpses are scattered around the ground, some lying on top of each other, some with limbs torn off, open throats, missing bits of flesh. 

It’s chaos — people around them with guns in their hands, shooting wildly, some bullets hitting innocent civilians who try to flee. The air is filled with black smoke coming from the burning cars and buildings. Screams echo through the streets, mingled with low moaning and the sharp sound of gunshots. People are being eaten right before their eyes, adults and children alike. 

Piers throws a brief glance to his side, seeing Chris stare at the horror in front of them with wide eyes. 

“We need to move,” Piers says. He quickly scans the area, seeing an alleyway to their side. He peeks inside, seeing that it’s deserted for now and not narrow enough to get cornered. “Come on, let’s try this alleyway. Slowly, we don’t wanna attract any unwanted attention.”

Chris gives a nod, quietly following Piers into the dark alley. 

“It’s different,” Chris says softly after they’ve walked in silence for a while. He’s calm, Piers observes, calmer than most people would be after seeing such violence enfolding before them. But that’s Chris. Ready to handle the impossible. “Seeing it with your own two eyes.”

“Yeah, it’s a lot to take in.”

“And you fought this? This is what you did for a living?”

Distant caws resound above them, and Piers looks up with apprehension, hoping they’re not gonna rain down on them any moment and attack. A knife isn’t gonna be any use against a swarm of infected crows. “You get used to it. And when it’s over, and you see the lives you saved... It’s worth it. It’s got a purpose — it gave _me_ a purpose. I’d never have chosen to do anything else.”

Another drawn-out silence. “Are you worried about your parents?”

Piers exhales. “Yeah. But they live at the edge of the city. Chances are, they’re already out.”

“We should go to them.”

“No, we concentrate on getting your friends,” Piers returns tersely. “That’s what we’re here for. And then, when you and the others are safely out of here, I’ll go back and check on my parents.”

“You mean you alone?”

“Yeah, alone.”

Chris shakes his head, incredulous. “I’m not gonna let you go on your own without—”

“And I’m not gonna let you put yourself into any more unnecessary danger,” Piers cuts him off. “I can handle myself, Chris. I know this. This was _my life_ , and I’m ready for whatever this city decides to throw at me. But I’m not ready to see you get hurt or worse. This venture we’re doing right now is bad enough.”

Chris suddenly stops in his tracks, and Piers turns around, ready to argue, when he catches sight of the look on Chris’s face. He’s staring at the ground, his lips parted in shock, the color draining from his cheeks. 

“Chris?”

Piers follows Chris’s gaze, swallowing once he sees what it is. 

It’s Forest. Or whatever is left of him. He’s given up the ghost, already several hours ago it seems. His body and face are peppered with countless small wounds, leaving him almost unrecognizable. Signs of a painful death. He’s probably been attacked by those infected crows he heard earlier, Piers guesses by the look of it. 

Chris sinks to the ground, crouching next to Forest’s corpse. He stares at it, silently, as if he’s been rendered unable to speak. Raises his hand to his face, hiding it behind them, shakes his head. 

Piers remains hovering behind him, giving him space to mourn, but close enough should anything else come near them. He keeps his eyes fixed on the sky, straining his ears to check if any of those crows are closing in on them. He can’t hear any caws anymore. They must have moved on. 

After a few long moments, Chris gets up again, coming over to Piers. 

“You okay?” Piers asks quietly. 

“Let’s get moving.”

They keep walking, making their way through the broken mess of the city that used to hold so much happiness for them for such a short time. The speed of Chris’s steps are faster now, and Piers can see he that he’s more determined than ever, resolved to get to the rest of the people he cares about before it’s too late.

Sometimes he feels like time is the real enemy in life — not the monsters, not the crazy scientists. The clock ticks for everyone, a constant reminder that one day, your time will have run out. Sometimes earlier than you think, sometimes later than you ever expected, perhaps even deserve. You can’t stop it, not by fighting, not by running. You can’t defend yourself against it, can’t turn it back. It’s an unwavering, almost god-like force, destroying everything in its path by simply being. 

“Hey, look.”

Piers looks over, seeing Chris crouch down next to a dead body wearing a police uniform. “What is it?”

“Could be useful.” Chris holds up a gun, and just by the way he holds it becomes apparent to Piers that this version of Chris has never held a gun in his life. 

“Here, give it to me,” Piers says, and Chris hands it to him. It’s a H&K VP70, he sees. Eighteen rounds. 9mm. Not exactly powerful, but better than no gun at all. “It’s still got some rounds left, but even fully loaded it’s not gonna get us any far. Is there any ammo on him?”

Bending down again, Chris starts patting the corpse’s pockets. Piers takes his eyes off him, making sure none of the hostiles are closing in on them. His eyes wander over the area, catching sight of a patch of blue in the distance. Piers narrows his eyes, takes a step closer into the direction. Is that... a woman? She’s not infected. She doesn’t seem scared or in panic. And she’s looking right at him, he realizes. What the...

A yell instantly jolts him out of his trance, and he quickly turns to look at Chris. The police officer — not a corpse, a zombie, he should have known, should have checked, goddammit — has its fingers curled around Chris’s ankles, drawing and clawing, successfully pulling him to the ground.

“Chris!” Piers yells, the gun already raised and aimed at the creature that’s towering above Chris’s body, trying to tear at his throat. It’s a difficult shot, with the two of them wrestling on the ground, moving fast and wild and without any steady rhythm to it. Piers pulls the trigger, and within a second the zombie goes limp, falling down on top of Chris with a thud. 

“Did he get you?” Chris has just pushed the zombie off of him as Piers reaches him. He places his hand on Chris’s shoulder, looking him over, searching for any injuries. “Chris, did he bite you?”

Chris is breathing heavily, eyes still a bit wide from the shock. “It’s just a scratch. I’ll be fine.”

“Where? Show me.”

Chris rolls up his jeans, revealing a nasty scratch on the skin there. The blunt fingernails didn’t cut cleanly through the skin, but tore open a lacerated wound. Small drops of blood trickle over the edge of the scratch. 

It’s not big, not deep enough to show flesh — probably not even that painful — and under normal circumstances most people would write it off as nothing. But here, in this moment, in this godforsaken town, with the man he loves sitting before him Piers knows that this means everything. 

“Piers?” Chris asks, his voice a little unsteady, soaked with uncertainty. 

One hour. If he makes it past that without showing any signs, then he isn’t infected. There’s still a chance. 

 _There’s still time_ , the captain’s voice echoes through his head. 

Piers tears his eyes away from the wound on Chris’s ankle and looks up. He opens his mouth, wants to give Chris reassurance, wants to act like the captain would in this situation, but before he’s even been able to form a syllable, he’s interrupted by the sound of growling behind him. 

 _Cerberuses._ Dammit. Can this get any worse?

He reaches out with his hand, pulls Chris to his feet. 

“Run,” he says quietly to Chris, trying not to agitate the infected dogs before them. He’s got no trouble taking care of them one by one, but he counts four of them. Could be a problem if they all attack at the same time. “Try to reach the nearest building that isn’t barricaded shut. I’ll try to shoot as many as I can. Go.”

A squeal resounds as Piers shoots one of the dogs. The others waste no time in charging at him, their bundled forces too much to handle with one gun alone. He quickly changes targets, luckily managing to kill another one. He turns, ready to get rid of the remaining two, but there’s no time. One of the Cerberuses leaps into the air, jumping at him with with blared teeth. 

A gunshot resounds, and the dog falls to the ground with a last yelp. It’s dead. Piers whips his head around, seeking the shooter. 

“Joseph,” Chris says, hurrying over to a guy Piers has never seen before. He’s in his 20s, dark hair, wearing a red bandana. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Joseph returns, tucking his gun back into his jeans. “The whole city has gone to hell it seems. I was just on my way out of here. You two should come with me.”

“We need to get to Richard first,” Chris insists. “You live closest to him, did you hear anything—”

“Chris, he’s gone. They drove upstate to visit Bridgette’s parents a few days ago. I haven’t heard from him since. Let’s just hope they’re still far away from here.”

Relief washes over Chris’s features. “Yeah, let’s hope so.”

“It’s not safe here,” Piers interjects, pacing around impatiently. “There could be more of them. And if there are, they definitely heard the gunshots. We need to get to—”

It’s like clockwork. Another pack of Cerberuses appear, this time six of them. Too many. One of them immediately separates from the group, dashing forward into Joseph’s direction. Piers shoots again, killing the dog with one shot, but it’s too late. Another one has already knocked Joseph of his feet, gnawing and biting. He screams, but soon isn’t able to any longer — blood sputters as his throat is ripped open. The other dogs join the other one, surrounding Forest, tearing him apart as the life quickly and surely leaves his body. He’s never stood a chance.

“Chris, we need to go! Now!” Piers grabs Chris by the hand, forcefully pulls him back, keeps him from trying to help his friend. It takes a bit longer than Piers is comfortable with, but  eventually Chris ceases resisting and turns around, following Piers. 

Together, they run, as fast as they’re able to.

“There, the restaurant!” Chris shouts.

“I see it!”

They make it just in time, close the door shut behind them, out of breath, exhausted. It’s quiet in the restaurant. The tables are all abandoned — glasses have been knocked over, some of the chairs have blood stains on them, but everyone who’s been here before is gone now. 

“You were right,” Chris says after a while. “This was a mistake. We should never have come.”

“Yeah,” Piers returns. “But it’s too late to change it now. No use to beat yourself up over it. Let’s just concentrate on getting out of here.” He looks over to Chris, feeling his heart drop at what he sees. Chris is pale, far paler than from shock alone. He’s still breathing heavily, even though they’ve had enough time to recover. Sweat glistens on his forehead as if inhaling and exhaling alone is too much effort to bear. 

“How’s your ankle doing?” Piers wants to know, trying to maintain a neutral tone.

“It hurts, but I can manage.”

“Let me see.”

Chris pulls up the leg of his jeans, slowly since the fabric of his pants are sticking to his leg, gritting his teeth as he does so. It’s as he expected. A foul smell emanates from the wound. No doubt from the greenish pus that’s coming from it. The skin around the scratch is swollen and red. All signs pointing to infection. 

Piers can hear the blood pounding in his ears. It doesn’t matter now when the missile hits. They’re doomed already.

“God, your face,” Chris says, releasing a humorless laugh. “It’s bad, isn’t it? Please, just... Just tell me the truth, Piers. I can handle it.”

“Yeah,” Piers chokes out. He sucks in a sharp breath, looking up into Chris’s eyes. “It’s bad.”

Chris sets his jaw, nods. Then he lifts his hand, reaching for Piers’s face as if to caress it, but then stops, drawing it back at the last moment. “Piers, I—”

He hears the click of a safety being released, and Piers vaults to his feet as quick as he can, raising his own gun to aim it at the intruder. 

“ _Jake_?!” Chris says from his position on the ground. 

“Drop the gun,” Piers orders, not lowering his own weapon. “I’m not asking twice.”

Jake shoots him a sore look, but does as he’s told. “I thought some of those moaning nut-jobs got in here. But then I heard talking. I hoped maybe the cops finally got around doing their job and take care of this mess. But obviously not.”

“What did you do?” Chris asks, lifting an eyebrow at the sight of the gun tucked into the rim of Jake’s jeans. “Raid Kendo’s gun shop?”

“Maybe. Wasn’t that much left to raid anyway.” His eyes linger on Chris, and he studies him, brow furrowing. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Not any of your damn business,” Piers jabs, stepping in front of Chris. 

“What?” Jakes says, sneering at him. “Are you his guard dog now or something?”

Piers grits his teeth and takes another step forward, but Chris gets onto his feet and quickly puts his hand on Piers’s shoulder, holding him back. “Jake, where’s your dad?”

Jake gives a shrug. “Haven’t seen him since all of this shit began.”

“Figures,” Piers says with a wave of his hand. “He’s probably the one who caused this.”

If looks could kill. “What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying, I’m stating facts. Your father is a psychopath. _Someone_ obviously released a deadly virus in this town, and I’m betting it’s him.”

“Shut the fuck up, Puppy. You don’t know _a thing_ about my dad.”

“Call me puppy one more time, _kiddo_ , and I swear to—”

“Yeah? What are you gonna do?”

“This isn’t helping,” Chris cuts in. “I think we should team up.”

“With _him_?” Piers says, ignoring Jake’s challenging bitch-face at that. “Are you serious? We can’t possibly trust him.”

“Piers, he’s a kid,” Chris says under his breath, low enough that Jake can’t hear. He looks Piers into the eyes, intently, almost urgently. Then, louder, “We have better chances if we stick together.”

Another shrug. “Fine by me.”

“Piers?”

Piers keeps his gaze fixed on Chris. Jake’s a kid, all right. Maybe it is better to stick close to him, better than letting him go off on his own and risking him become zombie food. It’s the right thing to do, he supposes. “Okay,” he eventually says, pushing his own personal feelings about this to the side for the moment. “I still don’t like this one bit, but okay.”

* * *

The three of them go on their way then, and it works for a good long while, works so well that Piers almost allows himself to hope that they will get out of this alive. 

Then Chris stumbles over his own feet, too weak to walk steadily any longer. Piers comes over to him, but Chris shakes him off, telling him that it’s all right, that he can manage. So unbelievably stubborn.

“We need to get to the hospital,” Piers says. “Maybe they got a cure, or something to at least slow this down, _anything_.”

“I can’t,” Chris croaks out. He collapses against the wall, leaning against it to hold himself upright. Drops of sweat are running down his temples, and there are dark circles under his eyes, a heavy contrast to the paleness of his skin. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. He looks sick. “I won’t make it. It’s too far.”

“Then I’ll go. You go somewhere safe with Jake and wait for me.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Chris returns. “Even if you make it there, it’s no guarantee that you’ll manage to get back here in one piece.”

Piers shakes his head, slowly but surely running out of options. “What else am I supposed to do?”

Chris just looks at him, his gaze softening.

“No,” Piers says, decided. “Don’t ask this of me, Chris. Don’t ask me to watch you die without being able to do anything to stop it.”

“I’m not asking you to do that,” Chris says gently. “I’m asking you to leave.”

Piers scoffs. “You can’t be serious.”

Chris doesn’t even blink. “Take Jake and get him out of the city.”

“The hell I will. There’s gotta be another way.”

“I’m done for, Piers. That’s what you said, remember? It’s over. But you. You can still make it out.”

“I am not leaving you.”

“This is all very touching, but I think we might have a bigger problem on our hands,” Jake suddenly interjects. 

Piers forces his eyes away from Chris, following Jake’s gaze. 

_You gotta be kidding me._

A form of Tyrant, there’s no doubt about it. Not Nemesis, not T-103 or T-00. It’s huge. A distorted face, lifeless holes as eyes, pores covering its left side. One arm a tentacle, the other ending with a giant claw. The skin slimy, almost translucent. Part Haos, part Nanan Yoshihara, part something else. Electricity sparks from the tentacle as the creature locks eyes with him, and that’s when Piers knows. It’s him. 

“Come on!” Jake shouts, already running away. “There! Head to the gas station!”

“Go,” Chris says, still not moving away from the wall.

Piers has never felt a stronger urge to punch someone. “Chris,” he says sharply. “Don’t you dare. _Don’t you fucking dare_.” He rushes to his side, bats away Chris’s hand that’s trying to fight him off and lifts Chris’s arm onto his shoulders, half-carrying him. 

It proves harder than expected, but together they hobble forwards, as quickly as they manage. 

_Almost there._

Jake’s standing in front of the STAGLA gas station, throwing two angry flat-palmed punches against the closed shutter. “What now? How the fuck are we supposed to get rid of the shutters?”

“Key,” Piers urges. “Chris, we need a key. Hurry.”

“Pocket,” Chris grunts out. 

Piers reaches into his left pocket, only finding a lighter. “Where—”

“Right one.”

Jake starts shooting at the BOW, trying to hold it off. Right. Once Piers has found the key for the shutters, he hands his gun to Chris. “Keep him off our asses as long as you can. I’ll try to get this open.”

He hears a hail of gunshots rain down onto the BOW as he puts the key into the lock, turning it over. The shutters are electronic, going up as slowly as one can possibly imagine. Fuck, _fuck_ —

“Faster!” Jake yells over his shoulder.

“This is as fast as it gets, asshole!” Piers shouts back.

Once the shutter is half open, he stops, reaching underneath to open the front door and gesturing the others to crawl under it when he’s managed to get it open.

When they’re all in the building, Piers gets the shutters down again, throwing a vending machine in front of the door for good measure. He can still hear the faint sound of the BOW roaring outside. 

“This barricade isn’t gonna last long. Sooner or later we’ll have to face that,” Jake says, pointing a finger at the now closed shutter. “Whatever _that_ is.”

“We’ll think of something,” Piers says. 

They head to the garage, closing the door to the office behind him. The place reeks of gasoline, and Piers sees that one of the cans must have fallen over, leaving a pool of gasoline on the ground.

Chris sinks to the ground and rests his back against one of the cars, closing his eyes for a moment as he lets out a deep exhale. He’s getting worse. They don’t have much time left. 

Piers goes to him, coming to stand right before him. He wants to say something, finds nothing. He wants to comfort him, but doesn’t want to lie. It feels like the one cancels out the other.

Chris stretches out his hand, giving Piers back the gun. “I used up all the ammo. Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Piers says, forcing a smile. “You did good.”

Against all odds, Chris smiles back at him. “What’s that? Piers Nivans being nice? The world really has turned upside down...”

Piers feels a lump growing in his throat. “I can still go,” he says quickly, almost swallowing up his own words, not wanting Chris to see how close he is to breaking down. “If I run, I can be back in two hours tops. You just gotta hold on until then.”

“Stay,” Chris just says. “Please.”

And so he does. He sits down on the ground next to Chris, feeling angry at himself, at the world. He feels Chris's head sink down against his shoulder, and Piers closes his eyes, shuts out everything that’s going on around them. He can almost pretend that they’re at home, curled up together on the sofa on a lazy Sunday morning. Watching bad movies, eating good food. Bear lying on the rug at their feet. The echo of Claire’s laughter coming up from the foot of the stairs. Chris’s arms around him, warm and safe and home. 

He can feel Chris heating up, radiating so much warmth that Piers feels like he’s sitting beside a furnace. His breathing is shallow in his ears, his heartbeat so fast and loud that Piers swears he’s able to hear it. 

“I’m so hungry...”

Piers curls his fingers into a fist, clenching. He wants to go back. Back to where it’s him that writhing in pain, where it’s him that’s dying. In this moment, he almost wants to be crazy, wants this to be a hallucination. 

“You need to stay awake,” Piers tells him. 

“But I’m tired,” Chris breathes, so quietly that’s no more than a whisper.

“I know. But you gotta fight it, all right?” He feels Chris nod against him, so he turns to Jake, swallowing down the ever-present tightness in his throat. “Jake, any ideas on getting out of here so far?”

“I’ve gone through everything that’s in here,” Jake replies. “There’s nothing we can use. At least nothing effective enough to take care of big guy out there.”

“Keep searching,” Piers orders. “I’ll try to think of something.”

Jake gives a nod and disappears into the front part of the gas station. 

The big shutter of the garage trembles suddenly, as if someone is hammering against it. Another punch follows, causing a huge dent to appear in the metal.

“Dammit,” Piers curses under his breath. He needs to think. _Think, think, think—_

A hand curls around his own then, gripping it with trembling strength, but unwavering resolution. Chris squeezes, as hard as he seems to be able to muster, forcing Piers to look back at him. 

It’s like the world around them comes to a stop. Chris blinks, slowly, and for the briefest moment his eyes focus on Piers and Piers alone. His lips part, as if he wants to speak, and Piers leans in, waiting, hoping, determined to let him speak, let him say whatever he wants to say. They’re not gonna get another chance. But all he hears is one shallow breath leaving Chris’s lungs. His blue eyes are still fixed on him as the light in them dims, gradually dissolving until... until it’s gone. His gaze sets and his lids close, as if they’re too heavy to bear keeping them open any longer. Chris’s head sags to the side, softly falling against the wall. Piers watches the tension leave his body, feels the hand wrapped around his own unclench, sees the uneven rising and falling of Chris’s chest cease. It just stops, as if it was never there at all. 

Piers is frozen in place. He keeps holding onto Chris’s hand, not feeling any pressure any more, no racing heartbeat, only the subsiding warmth. He doesn’t try to shake Chris awake, or say his name. He’s never been one for denial. No, the reality of this hits him with full force, without any mercy. 

And all he can do is stare blankly.

All the pain he endured in his life. The injuries he suffered, Merah’s limp body in his arms, having to watch his friends die in Edonia, Chris running away. Injecting himself with a virus he’d sworn to fight, making the crippling decision to force the captain to leave him behind... But not any of that, not questioning his own sanity, questioning his own memories, everything he’s ever known — no, not even _dying_ can compare to this. 

White, overwhelming static fills his head. He feels as if someone has taken hold of his heart, as if someone has curled their fist around it, clenching, squeezing it with so much force that it tears at the edges, throbbing painfully in his chest, bleeding out and slowly, but surely killing him from the inside.

He’s dead. He’s gone. Chris is gone.

He lets out a sharp breath, chocking, suddenly gasping for air. A strange, strangled sound leaves his lungs, like one from a dying animal. 

Jake must have heard, because he rushes back into the garage, eyes going back and forth between Piers and Chris. “Is he— Is it over?”

“For now,” Piers says. His voice sounds calm and collected in his ears, but it feels like a distant echo, as if the words aren’t coming from his own throat, but belong to someone else. “The virus is still in his system.”

Jake’s eyes flicker briefly to Chris’s body, and when they turn back to Piers they’re wide with apprehension. “So he’ll become one of them?”

Piers nods. He swallows, and his throat is so tight that it hurts. _Make it stop_.

Jake rises to his feet, taking out his pistol. There’s almost something close to sympathy on his features. “Look, if you can’t—”

“I’ll do it.”

Jake puts up his hands in defeat and backs away again, giving them space. “All right.”

Piers takes the hunting knife out, grips it tightly. He raises it slightly, aims for the head. His usually so calm and steady fingers start trembling, the knife shaking in his hand. Chris is motionless beside him, the eyes closed, and so still that he might have just been sleeping. 

Piers knows it’s only minutes now, knows that he’s got to end this before he turns, knows that it’s what Chris would have wanted him to do. Just a few inches more, and then it’s over.

 _Not yet_.

The knife slips out of his grip and falls to the ground with a dull clatter. 

“Fuck,” Piers grunts out, burying his face in his hands for a few drawn-out seconds. He can’t do it. 

He took out four Napads, knowing those used to be his friends, knowing one of them was Finn. Killed a mutated Marco without hesitation. Sacrificed himself so he wouldn’t become one of them.

And now he can’t do it. Because it’s Chris. _It’s Chris._

It’s selfish. It’s so fucking selfish. 

“Look, I get it,” Jake says from the other side of the room. “But we can’t leave, and if we’re stuck with one of those freaks in here, we’re gonna get killed even before our friend outside manages to break through the door. Better take care of it now, before he turns and tries to eat us.”

Piers hears footsteps coming closer, then the click of the safety. He instantly drops his hands from his face, reaches for the knife again and aims at Jake, concealing Chris from his view. The trembling in his limb has stopped. He feels hollow. Accepting. Like he’s capable of anything. “Don’t.”

The kid doesn’t even flinch. “You know I’m right.”

“I know,” Piers says calmly, not lowering the weapon. “Go.”

“What?” Jake looks taken aback, starts studying him with an incredulous expression. The gun in his hand seems forgotten.

“You heard me,” Piers goes on, taking out the keys from his pockets and throwing them to Jake. “Head to the front door. Leave through the shutters and head right. Run as fast as you can and don’t look back.”

Jake shakes his head at him as if he thinks Piers has lost his mind. He gestures to the dent in the shutters behind them. “What about the raging monster outside? Did that little detail somehow happen to slip your memory?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“How the fuck are you gonna do that? You don’t have any ammo.”

“I said I’ll take care of it!” Piers shouts at him. “Now _go_. Get the hell out of here, before I shove you out.”

Jake throws one last doubtful look at him, but then he nods, turning around and heading back to the office. 

Piers doesn’t know if his plan will work. But even if he doesn’t manage to kill it, it’ll give Jake a head start and the needed chance to get the hell out of the city. 

He faintly hears Jake pushing away the vending machine, then the soft buzzing of the electronic shutter being let up. 

This is it.

Piers hauls off, throws the hunting knife against the shutter with as much as force as he can conjure up, and the sharp clang follows a roar from outside. He throws the gun against it too, praying it’s enough to distract the Tyrant and lead its attention away from Jake. 

It is. The shutter gives a violent shake as the BOW directs a punch against it, once, twice, three times. A blast of electricity hits the metal, filling Piers’s ears with a buzzing sound he’s never wanted to hear ever again. 

Chris’s head sags down from where it was resting against the wall, and Piers catches him, letting his head sink carefully down onto his lap. “It’ll be over soon,” he says softly, brushing away one of the strands of hair that are sticking to Chris’s pale forehead. He immediately feels stupid for doing so, knowing that Chris isn’t able to feel this anymore, feel anything. He’s gone. This body in his arms is just a mere shell. There’s nothing left that makes Chris _Chris_ anymore. 

Waiting.

He opens the lighter, creates a spark with a flick. The flame quivers, softly, and it’s tiny, almost fragilely so. Not for much longer. He knows he’s holding a much greater power in the grip of his hand. Moaning fills his ears, and he shuts it out, not wanting to hear it, this sound of his own selfishness and failure. He doesn’t move away as blunt fingernails begin to claw at his skin, trying to tear it. Then a bite. Not sharp, not clean. It’s messy, lacerating the skin, ripping it apart, slowly, painfully. Piers chokes as blood gushes from his wrist, and it runs over his hands, soaks the fabric on his thighs, warm and slippery and wet. It hurts.

The hammering against the shutter is growing louder by the second, more forceful. It’s not gonna be long now.

Another bite, this time deeper. He’s bleeding out. He knows he is.

A crash as the garage shutter bursts open and the BOW finally enters the room. 

Slow, heavy footsteps approach him. Seconds now. 

Piers throws the ignited lighter into the pool of gasoline and blood. In the blink of an eye, flames envelop him fully, burning the flesh off his bones, and he screams, closes his eyes, feels the _thing —_ not Chris, Chris is dead, Chris isn’t coming back — beside him keep chewing and clawing as if it doesn’t even feel the heat, the pain. The BOW before him roars in agony. Gotcha.

He hopes Jake is far away from here, hopes he’ll survive this, hopes that he at least made a difference by protecting the kid. Hopes that Claire is safe somewhere, that this isn’t a start of something terrible. As long as—

 _Boom_.

The flames have spread, now reaching the rest of the pumps and the abandoned cars. The gas station explodes, destroying everything in and around it in a devastating blast, leaving nothing and no one behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The ending was written to Keaton Henson's "You", which I think is one of the most beautiful songs ever created.)  
> Next chapter will take a while. I think 2 weeks, maybe longer.  
> But anyway, a huge thanks to everyone who's read this this far! Just knowing that people have spent minutes/hours of their free-time reading this means the world to me.
> 
> UPDATE: This chapter now has fanart! https://twitter.com/KrystalNingu/status/825494274120691712   
> I'm still in awe.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes. Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you. Quit milling around the yard and come inside.” — from _Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_

It’s raining. He doesn’t take note of it, not at first. He sees people jogging hastily away, sees them vanish into buildings, to safety. He takes a peek behind his back, watching out for anything unusual, his hand already reaching for a gun that isn’t there. It’s instinct, he supposes. Even when everything else was lost, that remained. And it still does.

 _It’s just water_ , he thinks, and then chides himself for it. Even water can kill. It’s just a matter of circumstances.

He’s late. She’s gonna worry, more than she already does. It’s not like him to be late.

When he enters the café, she’s already sitting there, the phone placed on the table with the screen facing up, her fingers wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee. She fidgets in her seat, the movement telling him that this isn’t the first cup of coffee she ordered in this café. There are dark circles under her eyes, not too prominent, but still there. Her shoulders visibly sink with relief when she catches sight of him. She briefly holds up her hand as a form of greeting, then smiles. The gesture doesn’t reach her eyes.

His own lips give a twitch, and the movement feels wrong and out of place, as if his muscles have forgotten how to function properly. He apologizes for being late, because that’s something he would do, normally. She tells him that it’s okay, and the two of them fall into silence.

It’s not exactly comfortable, but it’s what they both need.

For him, it’s a chance to be himself again, act like a normal person for once. The chatter of the people around them, the clatter of the dishes, and the soft hum of the radio form a pleasant background noise. It’s not completely silent, but it’s quiet. Loud enough to drown out his thoughts, the accusations he directs at himself, the voices telling him that he should have done more, should have known, should have—

For her, it’s a decent enough excuse to be able to watch over him. To get him out of the house. She took time off work to be here with him, sitting in this café, sitting in quietude. He should probably make better use of her time, use it as an opportunity to talk. There’s been a lack of that, recently. There always has been, come to think of it.

He stares out of the window, watches the drops of rain chasing each other down the glass.

“I wonder if that constant raining is ever going to stop,” she says. “It’s July and all we’ve had is terrible weather like this. So much for summer.”

He hums in agreement, not taking his eyes off the glass. One of the raindrops is much faster than the others, sliding down the window in solitary until it’s out of sight. He doesn’t mind the rain, or the cold. Mild temperatures are better than searing heat. He’s had enough of that in China. At least this... this feels appropriate. Like the world isn’t pretending to be something it isn’t.

When he opened the door of that pod, cradled that blood-stained badge in his hand, the seemingly endless ocean before him, the blinding rays of sunshine falling right into his eyes, bright and warm and nice — that didn’t feel right. It felt like a lie. Because how dare it? How dare the world be so beautiful in that moment after everything that happened? How dare it be so unchanged, so unaffected?

His hand curls to a fist, and he can feel Claire’s eyes on him as his knuckles give a soft crack. He doesn’t need to look at her to know that there’s worry on her features. Worry for him.

Moving on should come more easily to him, he thinks. Shouldn’t he finally have gotten used to it? To this aching in his chest, this suffocating guilt in his throat — to loss?

There’s something different about this. _It’s Piers._

He doesn’t really know what that means. Why it feels like an explanation in itself.

It’s been a week, he remembers. Of course he’s still mourning, still not ready to let go.

Chris eases the tension in his fist and finally turns around to look at her. He says something trivial about the weather, orders a coffee, tries to smile. As long as he keeps going, right? As long as he doesn’t quit — isn’t that what _he_ wanted? To have Chris back in the BSAA, join the mission in China, lead the team, listen to Piers’s arguments, get his own memory back, save Jake, remain captain, get in that pod without him, leave him behind, let him _die_. That’s what _he_ wanted, all right. _His_ decisions, _his_ wishes. It’s like Chris never got a say in this, in any of it.

Not for the first time in these seven long days, he wishes thoughts like these wouldn’t bring along so much bitterness, so much anger. At Piers, for dying. At himself, for living. It’s not fair, but not much in the world is. He’s learned that the hard way over the years. And he doesn’t expect it to change now.

* * *

Alive.

He’s lying in his bed, soaked with sweat, the clothes clinging onto his skin. In his search for the buzzing phone he almost knocked over the half-empty bottle of gin on his nightstand — a moment of weakness, he tells himself, just tonight. Not that it helped. His dreams are still haunted by distorted faces, hollow voices, constantly changing, taking up the shapes of people he’s failed. Richard, Claire, Finn... The list is long, too long. But still he remembers every single name, every single death, every moment.

 _Alive_. _Not conscious yet. Stable._ At first he thinks he’s still dreaming, because this— it can’t be. It’s wishful thinking, a part of him he’s stashed away somewhere hidden, somewhere safe where it’s been repressed, perhaps even forgotten. Not an ache for what was, but for what could have been.

A hundred questions roam through his mind, but he keeps them in, doesn’t say anything, cannot focus on anything right now, just drives, to him, to see him.

He’s in a private hospital wing, in a building that belongs to the BSAA, somewhere secluded and not accessible to the public. Safety reasons, he supposes, but he doesn’t think more of it. There’s time for that later, he tells himself. Logic and explanation and consequences — all of that’s for later. There’s only one thing that matters right now.

When Chris enters the tiny, sterile room, his knees threaten to give in underneath him, a sensation he’s not used to. Maybe it’s because he never expected this to happen. Maybe it’s because there’s a part of him that’s still not convinced he’s not dreaming all of this. He closes the door behind him, leans his back against it for support, keeps his eyes fixed on the figure lying in the hospital bed.

He doesn’t even look like himself. He looks small. Fragile. There’s a touch of peacefulness in there too, in all that stillness. No scowl, no smirk, no determined wrinkles on his brow, no rare smile that’s always been reserved for the BSAA and the BSAA alone. Without really meaning to, Chris’s gaze wanders to Piers’s chest, and he sees it moving up and down in an even rhythm. He lets out the breath he hasn’t been aware of holding.

“Can I—” Chris clears his throat, tears his eyes away from Piers to throw a brief glance back at the doctor. The guy told him his name just minutes ago, but he’s already forgotten, didn’t listen properly. “Can I have a minute?”

“Of course,” the doctor returns. His eyes flicker to Piers, then back to Chris. Chris doesn’t know what’s visible on his face right now, but the way the guy studies him tells him that’s it’s pretty much everything. “Come and speak to me when you are ready. I am sure you have a lot of questions.”

“Thank you.”

Chris moves out of the way to let the doctor through, and then the door gives a dull click as it closes behind him, and all that’s left is the steady beeping of the heart monitor and Chris’s own heart that’s drumming in his chest, much louder and much more violent.

Slowly, he crosses the room, approaches the bed. His own footsteps sound too loud in his ears. He pulls a chair next to the bed, not trusting his own limbs to hold him upright, and the legs of the chair give a squeak as they scrape against the floor. Everything he does feels too loud, too high, too unnatural, like he’s an intruder who’s got no right to be here.

Chris leans forward, takes in the image of Piers lying there, in front of him, alive. His hair is longer now, lying flat against his forehead. It’s the first time Chris has seen it like this, without any product in it. He looks younger like this. There are small patches of scars all over his face. Over his brow, on his cheeks. The right side took the worst of it. There, the scars go down all the way to his neck, vanishing underneath the hem of Piers’s shirt. Chris’s eyes follow their trail, to the spot where Piers’s right arm is supposed to be. It’s gone, amputated. And with it, all visible sings of the virus.

For a while he just sits there in silence, staring, his stomach churning with worry and guilt. Starts rubbing his palm, a nervous tick he’s tried to get rid of a long time ago, but that sometimes still reaches the surface. Then he can’t take it anymore and reaches out, lays his hand on Piers’s shoulder, not knowing if the comfort is intended for Piers or for himself. He lets his thumb brush over the fabric of Piers’s shirt, squeezes once, gently, not too hard, not wanting to do any more damage.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he says quietly, not knowing if Piers is even able to hear him. There’s no movement on his face, no reaction, no sound — just the steady beeping of the heart monitor. His earlier relief has already subsided, and a urgent sense of dread has filled the hole in his chest. This isn’t over yet. He’s not awake, he’s not back. Not really, not yet. Without really meaning to, Chris’s clasp on Piers’s shoulder tightens. “You just... gotta hold on, all right? Just a little while longer.” His voice is strained, his throat constricting. He feels selfish for asking it, asking for more, after everything Piers has done for the BSAA, has done for him, but the next words leave his mouth regardless, sounding more like a choke than complete, coherent sentences. “If anyone’s stubborn enough to get through this, it’s you. So you— you gotta keep fighting, Piers. I—”

Chris stops, letting go of him and getting up from his seat. His eyes have begun to sting, and he looks up, blinks, rubs the tiredness and anxiety away, tries to get himself together, get back to the professional demeanor that’s needed to get through this.

The doctor’s already waiting for him outside, and Chris just lets him speak, listens, replays the words over in his head. Wait, he thinks. _What?_

“A month?” Chris repeats, loud enough for the doctor to flinch. “He’s been here a _month_ and nobody thought to inform me about it? He’s my first lieutenant, goddammit. He’s my responsibility. I was— I should have been informed _the second_ you found him!”

“Captain Redfield, please calm down. I understand your emotional—”

“This got nothing to do with me being emotional!” Chris shoots back, though he knows he’s being unreasonable, “this is about what’s right. I had a right to know he’s alive.”

“Up until yesterday we weren’t certain if he would survive the treatment,” the doctor returns, calm, but resolute. “We consulted with HQ and we agreed that it was better not to inform you of Lieutenant Nivans’ survival until his status was stable.”

 _I wish people would finally stop trying to make my decisions for me, goddammit_ , Chris thinks, sensing that bitterness again. Aloud, he asks, “And he’s stable now?”

The doctor nods. “Yes. But as the virus is still in his system—”

“What?” Chris gapes at him, taking a step closer, sure he hasn’t heard correctly. “But what about the cure? Jake’s blood?”

“This is a rather rare case,” the doctor begins, carefully. “While his brain activity suggests that he is still human for the most part, we must also take into consideration that the patient has already displayed J’avo characteristics when he was brought into this facility. Administration of the vaccine at this stage is always fatal. We could not risk killing him.”

“But how’s he still alive?” Chris asks, bewildered. “The explosion, the water— Why didn’t his arm regenerate when you cut it off? Why isn’t he... one of them?”

“Short answer? We don’t know.”

Chris’s gaze wanders back to the closed door of Piers’s room. “He infected himself with a different strain, maybe...”

“It is a possibility.”

Chris looks back at the doctor, sees the other man’s eyes still fixed upon the door. There’s a strange, contemplating look on his face, like he’s staring at a puzzle that needs to be solved. Chris doesn’t like it one bit. His own eyes dart down to the guy’s name tag. _Anderson_. Gotta remember that, Chris thinks, making a mental note to keep a closer eye on him.

“But when is he gonna wake up?” Chris asks finally, catching the doctor’s attention again as he speaks the question that’s been on his mind ever since he learned the news.

“I’m afraid we don’t know the answer to that either,” Anderson replies with a sigh. “We’re keeping him here under close observation. You can trust us to do everything in our power to help Lieutenant Nivans. And should he show signs of consciousness, you will be one of the first to be informed.”

“I better be.”

* * *

He takes one last quick drag on his cigarette, and then quickly throws it to the ground, stubbing it out with a grind of his foot when he sees Claire approaching from afar. He didn’t think she’d find him this easily, but he guesses she simply knows him too well.

He’s gone outside, just needing a bit of fresh air. It’s the end of August, and the leaves have already begun to change color. Fall is coming early this year, it seems. It’s beautiful out here, and it’s quiet. No beeping heart monitor, no white walls, no lab coats. It feels like a place to pretend that everything’s fine, like Piers isn’t still lying in that hospital bed, still locked up in that room, without improvement in those long two months. It’s not working. It still feels fake.

“I don’t know why you keep trying to hide it,” Claire says with raised eyebrows and a half-hearted smile once she’s reached him. “It’s not like I can’t smell the smoke on your clothes.”

“Yeah,” Chris says. “I don’t know. I didn’t think you’d approve.”

Claire shakes her head at him, and he doesn’t know if it’s out of disapproval or exasperation. He looks away, still able to feel her studying him. She’s been putting up with a lot lately, he knows that. She and Piers have been friends. All of this can’t be that much easier for her than it is for him.

“You know, you do need to sleep once in a while,” she breaks the silence, coming right to the point. “Torturing yourself won’t make him wake up any sooner.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. And if Piers were here, he’d say the same thing to you.”

“I doubt it,” Chris says. “He’d be glad that I’m back in the BSAA, that’s what he’d say.”

“You say that like it’s the only thing he would care about,” Claire returns, looking at him with wrinkles in her brow. “He cares about _you_ , Chris. He always has. I don’t know how you’re not able to see that.”

“You didn’t know him like I did,” Chris says quietly, not even realizing that he’s using the past tense already.

“No, I didn’t. I don’t. But do you know the one thing he wouldn’t shut up about in his e-mails? You. Captain this, Captain that. He practically venerated you, Chris. Believe me, he cares.”

“Yeah, for my work in the BSAA maybe,” Chris mutters, recalling the frustration on Piers’s face when he found him in that bar in Europe, the way Piers glared at him in that hallway in China. There had been no veneration in that. “Anything else is nothing more than a disappointment.”

Claire opens her mouth, then shuts it again. Her gaze softens, and she comes closer, placing a hand on his upper arm, forcing him to look back at her. “You’ll still get a chance to tell him. I’m sure of it.”

“Tell him what?”

She only smiles at him, softly, and gives his arm another gentle, reassuring squeeze.

* * *

He can still smell the cigarette smoke on his own clothes when he later sits down in Piers’s room again. It’s late, he knows he should be leaving soon, prepare himself for the next mission. He’s taken some work with him, thinking maybe he’d have the time to work on some reports that still need be written.

He talks to him, sometimes. They said that could help. Most of the time he keeps it casual; talks about the weather, the rest of the team, work in general. Sometimes he plays Piers’s favorite music. He reads his reports aloud to Piers, checking them for any mistakes, knowing that if Piers is able to hear, he’d appreciate being kept in the loop.

“If feel like you would have been able to see a way out of that mess right away,” Chris says when he’s done with the report, stashing the laptop back into his bag. “Would have saved us a lot of time and effort. You’ve always been a quicker thinker. A great soldier. One of the best I’ve ever come across in all those years. Not just because of your skill, you know? Because of your conviction. Your determination. You... You’d have made a great captain. Not because I wanted to retire, but because you’re you. I had nothing to with it. You— I guess should have told you that before, huh? Back when you needed to hear it. When you _could_ hear it. God, shit.”

Chris scoffs, shakes his head at himself. There’s a lump in his throat again, and he tries to swallow it down, closes his eyes for a brief moment. Inhales, exhales, slowly. “It’s not just that. There’s so much I didn’t say. Maybe I was afraid, I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t know better.”

He can hear the rain outside, hear the raindrops hitting the glass of the windows. Then the steady noise grows more violent, louder, as if the rain has turned into hail.

He reaches for Piers’s hand, cradling it in-between his two own, taking comfort in the fact that it’s still warm, still there, still alive. “You’d probably flip seeing me like this,” Chris goes on with a humorless smile. “All pathetic, wallowing in my own self-pity, smoking and drinking again. Shit, do you know what I’d give to have you get angry at me right now? What I’d give to have you—”

He presses his lips together, tightening his hold on Piers’s left hand, squeezing it, holding on like it’s a lifeline. It starts shaking in his own trembling grip, and he lets his head sag down against it, presses his forehead on it, thinking he can’t take this much longer. “I need you here. I need you to wake up. Please, just... Wake up.”

* * *

September’s slowly, but surely approaching its end, and when Chris wakes up this morning he sees that he’s fallen asleep in the chair next to Piers’s bed again. It happens sometimes, lately more often than not.

“Chris?”

His neck is stiff and hurting as he spins his head towards the source of the voice. “Jill.”

She’s standing in the doorway, a small bundle of flowers in her hand, simple, but elegant. The flowers share the same radiant blue color as her outfit, and all Chris can think about is how goddamn glad he is to see her here. If someone understand how his mind works, how he feels without having to say it, it’s Jill.

She crosses the room, placing the flowers on one of the tables for now, and comes over to where he’s sitting. His own hand reaches out before he even feels her touch on his shoulder. He wordlessly puts his palm over hers, and it’s like he can feel the comfort soaking through his skin, making him feel calmer already.

“Any improvement?”

Chris shakes his head. “Sometimes he moves a finger or his lids give a twitch. But nothing definite. The... effects of the virus are still unpredictable. He could stay like this forever, for all the doctors know. And they don’t know much of anything.”

“You still think he’s gonna wake up.” There’s no accusation in her voice, no hint of pity. She’s just stating facts.

“Sometimes you just need to have a little faith.” Chris half-turns around, looking up at her. “Worked with you, didn’t it?”

The ghost of a smile appears on her features, and for what feels like the first time in forever, Chris smiles back.

* * *

It’s the middle of the night when it happens. He’s at home when he gets the call from Anderson himself. He’s told to wait till morning to come over, but hell, it’s Piers, and Chris doesn’t give a damn what the doctor says. He doesn’t brush his teeth or his hair, just gets into the next best clothes he can find and drives to the hospital.

He comes to a halt just outside the room, the room he’s been in more often than his own apartment during the last three months, the room that’s become so familiar to him that if he were able to draw, he could draw it by memory alone. Hesitation keeps him back, the sudden dread of what he’s gonna find in there. He swallows, quickly deciding to stop thinking and simply _do_ , and enters the room.

Piers’s eyes find him immediately. He blinks, slowly, as if his lids are too heavy to carry, but Chris can see recognition in them. Something else is there too, something fierce. Chris doesn’t know how to interpret it. It could as well be anger, but something tells him that that’s not it. No, this is a different kind of emotion, but no less strong.

“Hey,” Chris says, feeling incredibly dumb.

“Hey,” Piers returns after some hesitation, his voice rough as gravel.

“Not too long. He needs rest,” the doctor tells him as he makes his way to the door. “He’s still a bit confused, but that was to be expected. If anything else happens, call me immediately.”

Chris nods, and the door gives a click as Anderson shuts it behind him. He eyes the chair next to Piers’s bed, but he doesn’t sit down. “How're you feeling?”

“Been better.”

Chris nods again. “Right.”

“They... they gave me something to calm down, I think. To sleep. As if I haven’t done that enough.” Piers looks around, as if he’s scanning the room for something. He looks dazed, confused. Tired, mostly.

“Right,” Chris says again. “I don’t wanna keep you up any longer, I just got the call that you’re awake and I needed to see you. Had to see it with my own two eyes, I guess.”

“Mhm,” Piers just makes, his speech already growing sluggish, his eyes falling shut. He doesn’t even seem to have listened.

Chris swallows the lump in his throat and takes a step closer, wanting to touch Piers’s shoulder, then opting to awkwardly give the edge of the mattress a squeeze instead. “Anyway, it’s good to have you back.”

Piers doesn’t react, and so Chris draws his hand back and turns around, ready to let him have some needed rest. Fingers suddenly curl around his wrist, keeping him in place, and Chris almost slips out of the weak grip, so far that Piers’s hand wraps around Chris’s finger tips instead, gently, but surely, as if they’ve been holding hands a million times already.

“Stay.” Piers looks at him through half-closed eyes. No preamble, no ‘please’. Still giving him orders, Chris thinks, even after just waking up from a three month long coma. It’s so typical, it’s so _Piers_. The thought almost makes him smile.

“Okay,” Chris says, sitting down in his chair again. He doesn’t remember when he’s come to think of it as _his_ , it just is.

Piers makes no movement to let go of his hand, so Chris doesn’t either.

“’m sorry I couldn’t do it,” Piers murmurs after a while, almost swallowing up the words, already half-asleep. His face briefly twists into a grimace, as if he’s in pain. “Not you.”

“What?” Chris says softly, leaning closer. “Couldn’t do what? Piers?”

There’s no answer, only the fingers interlaced with his own. Piers has fallen asleep.

* * *

A nurse shoos him out of the room not long after that. He contemplates staying there, waiting, soon realizing that it’s a stupid notion. Piers needs rest, needs space. Chris pacing back and forth outside of his room isn’t gonna help anyone.

So he drives home, and for the first time in what feels like forever he actually gets a full night sleep. When he wakes, it’s to the midday sun sneaking its way through the small cracks of the blinds, shining into his face and making the color of his bedsheets much whiter than it actually is. He blinks, squints, trying to get used to the unexpected brightness. Lets out a groan before he rolls over to look at the clock on his bedside table. It’s well past 1 PM, he sees. He can’t remember the last time he’s slept this long. If ever.

Chris doesn’t know why he’s surprised when he sees that Piers is already awake when he arrives at the hospital. There’s this weight dropping off his shoulders again, so relieving that he swears he’s physically able to feel it.

Piers’s eyes find his, and God, the way he looks at him. This mixture of anger and disappointment and something else Chris still fails to identity. Like he’s conflicted. There’s pain in those hazel eyes, too, and Chris knows that he’s the one who put it there.

Feeling like a coward, Chris looks away, shifting his attention on the table beside his first lieutenant instead. Out of the corners of his vision, he sees Piers turning his head, following Chris’s gaze. There’s some half-eaten blueberry pie on a plate, which can only mean one thing.

“Your parents were here?” It’s supposed to be a statement, but it comes out with so much uncertainty that it might as well be a question.

“My mom.”

“Just her? What about your dad?”

Piers remains silent, a trait so uncharacteristic that it tells Chris everything he needs to know. Piers has never spoken a bad word of his father, but there’s always been this stiffness coming along with the topic, things left unsaid. Chris never pried, and he won’t now.

“I’m sorry,” is all he says, and he means it.

“No, it’s fine. It’s better like this, trust me.”

Chris doesn’t follow, but he just nods, pressing his mouth into an accepting line. An awkward silence arises, in which Chris just stands there, not knowing where to look, not knowing what to do with his hands, what to do with any of it, really. He feels like the two of them are no longer on the same page. Changed without being able to turn back. They’ve never been like this before, and it’s confusing as it is aggravating.

Chris is lost in thought when Piers suddenly breaks through the silence. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Be here.” Piers grimaces, shaking his head at himself. “No, that’s not... I’m just saying that you don’t... _owe_ me anything.”

For a moment, Chris doesn’t even know what to say. There are a thousand things he _wants_ to say, but none of them feel appropriate, not with the way Piers refuses to look him in the eyes.

“You’re angry with me,” he says eventually, because of all the things, that’s the one that Chris is a hundred percent sure about.

“I’m not.”

Chris waits. He feels like there’s a ‘but’ coming.

“But,” Piers starts, and Chris lets out the breath he’s been holding. _Ah_ , he thinks. _There it is_. “I don’t know. It’s too complicated to explain.”

Chris nods, accepting. “I understand.”

A flash of irritation washes over Piers’s features. “Oh, do you?”

“Yeah, I think I do. I failed you. Just like the rest of them, all of them.” He makes an involuntary pause, trying to get the image of a battered, infected Piers standing in front of the escape pod out of his head. “I told you I’ll get you home, that I’ll get you out of there, and I didn’t. Pretty good reason to be upset with me.”

“It wasn’t your decision to make, Chris.” Piers lets out an exhausted breath, his expression full of tiredness, though it doesn’t make any sense. He’s acting as if they’ve already had this discussion a hundred times before, and he’s tired of explaining his side of things one more time. Then his expression changes, and a hint of a fake smile reluctantly starts to tug at his mouth, something Chris has never seen on Piers’s face before. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” is all Chris says.

Piers is still looking at him, still wearing that smile. Chris’s breath catches as the memory of yesterday flares up in the back of his mind, and along with it, the ghost of Piers’s touch on his skin. He flexes his fingers, ignoring the warmth that’s beginning to spread through his gut at the thought. Instead, he reaches into the pocket of his jacket, carefully taking _it_ out. He cradles it in his hand a moment longer, remembering all the times he’s done so over the past few months, the comfort it gave him, the only thing to hold onto on particularly bad nights.

Finally, he lets go and hands the BSAA patch over to Piers. It’s still dirty and covered in blood. “Figured I give this back to you.”

“You kept it.”

“You were gone,” Chris just says, as if that manages to explain everything. He feels like it does.

* * *

It’s just the little things. The smiles, the way Piers touches him far more often than he used to, the distant looks sometimes. The fact that ever since he woke up, he’s never called Chris ‘Captain’ again; just Chris. Because that’s what they are now — Chris and Piers. They’re different now, both of them. Something’s changed, even if Chris is still not entirely sure what.

It’s visible in the way he sometimes catches Piers looking at him with a strange expression, letting that otherwise so impeccable wall he’s built around himself crack more and more with each passing week.

It’s visible in the way they talk, not just mostly about work like they used to. The way Chris finds himself laughing more often than he ever used to.

In the way Piers doesn’t refuse Chris’s help during the hard months after, when he needs physiotherapy, and training, and countless talks with therapists and doctors, and evaluations and tests, and everything else that’s necessary to get him back on his feet and return, at least for the most part, to his old life.

It’s not easy, and there’s frustration there too. Loud arguments, and yelling and shouting, and Chris is with him through all of it.

They’re in the gym when it happens. Piers is cursing again, complaining about trivial stuff like he always does, and he looks so _angry_. Chris tries to repress it, he really does, but the laugh escapes his mouth before he can stop it.

Piers stops and turns his head to look at him, his sweaty face twisting into a confused expression, his body shaking with heavy breaths from the exercise. “Is something funny?”

“You,” Chris says, still unable to remove the smile from his face. “You’re like a grumpy old man. Honestly, Piers, is there anything in this world you haven’t yet complained about?”

It’s the way Piers looks at him then that does it. Now that the disappointment and anger have slowly begun to subside over time, Chris is finally able to identify the other emotion on Piers’s face. Longing, he realizes. It’s longing.

Chris raises his hand to Piers’s face, brushing away the strand of sweaty hair that’s sticking to his forehead. The movement is slow and careful, just in case he’s wrong. For the briefest moment, Piers closes his eyes, almost leaning into the touch, as if he’s trying not to.

Piers opens his eyes again, but he doesn’t move away. “Chris—”

“Hey,” Chris says softly, letting his hand trail down to Piers’s cheek instead, cupping it. “It’s okay.”

It doesn’t feel like a first kiss. It feels like finally returning from a long, tiring mission. It feels right.

It feels like home. 

\--THE END--

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy! Comments are loved.


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